Having Some Work Done

In the summer of 2004, I was living with Stacia in a posh little apartment in north Ames.  Oh, we had it made up there.  Sitting on the banged-up futon, watching the 13" TV-VCR combo.  Cooking in a cramped one-way galley kitchen that made us swear we'd never settle for a small kitchen again (spoiler alert: we did and it was silly).  And when we weren't sprinting to catch up to the CyRide bus we were invariably late for, we had a 1992 Chevy Corsica to get us around town.  It looked a little bit like this one:

All things considered, it was a great car.  Except that it had previously been in an accident that somehow bent the frame vertically (how?), which in turn caused the radiator to spontaneously crack and leak antifreeze everywhere, and occasionally it just didn't start, and stalled in the middle of the road on at least one occasion, and all of which I might have noticed had I not been consumed by an extreme need to own my own car, purchasing the first thing I could afford in the middle of winter.  It was real nice.

So, much as I may have loved that horrible beast, when one day it decided not to start, it was time to look for something new.  After test driving some rather bad options, Stacia convinced me to spend the money and finance something that would actually run and last.  I relented and began compiling a list of pretty much all the late model cars for sale in Ames.  We looked at some, kicked some tires, did a few test drives, actually heard the line "what will it take to get you into this car?" to mixed results.  When what to our wondering eyes should appear, but an azure beauty on four wheels.  The Saturn SL1.

It was small.  It had no power door locks or windows.  For that matter, it didn't have much power under the hood.  It had an AM/FM stereo and plain cloth seats.  In short, it was fantastic.  Naturally, we bought it.  It looked pretty much like this:

Over time, I grew to really appreciate the Saturn.  Underpowered, sure, but you learn how to use momentum to keep up speed without engine grunt.  And with that timid little engine came great gas mileage.  Gas mileage, I should note, that few small cars today, nearly a decade beyond the 2002 model we own, can match.  And when your commute is about 5 miles on your own, you don't really need anything bigger.  On most days, I love this car.

But just the other day we had to take the car in for service.  And nothing flips the Jekyll/Hyde switch in me for this car like having a minor problem.  We had to replace a head gasket fairly early on in our ownership of the Saturn, and I remember angrily suggesting that we should just replace the damn thing.  Then we bucked up and paid for the repair, after which I quickly forgot how certain I had been that the car was shoddily designed and built.  More recently, the past oil change, the shop had discovered an oil leak, necessitating a valve cover gasket change.  I was measuredly okay with that, but when I discovered that I was still losing oil afterward, man, was I irked.

So I dropped the Saturn off for repairs that ended up being a decarbonization of the cylinders, which we hope works to stop the leak path of the oil.  Two sets of repairs, two oil changes in a row.  Then, to top things off, the car needed to be in the shop overnight, so I got a loaner.  A sleek, svelte Mazda 3.  A car with some oomph, with a really nice stereo, and a fun "manu-matic" transmission that lets you pretend you have a manual transmission.  What a horrible flirt, that car.  And while my old Saturn was in the shop, no less!

I'll admit, it was a sexy little car, and it was fun to drive around on the day that I had it.  But there was something comforting about getting the Saturn back.  Once I turned the too-heavy steering wheel to pull out of the shop and pressed the too-squishy brake to stop at the light, I felt at home again.  And when it did some engine shuddering during a stop at the grocery store (a now-familiar occasional quirk, that no shop has been able to repair), I will admit to getting pretty irritated, but at the same time, you'd have a hard time convincing me to give it up.  I haven't seen anything better out there, and the Saturn has stood by me for a long time.  Like the mug they gave me at the dealer says, "I <3 My Saturn."

* The old car started up just fine this morning, even in sub-zero temperatures.  I don't know if the decarbonization will work out or not, but at only 8 years and 112,000 miles old, I plan to have this car for many years to come.