[Normy]

-My dad told me that during the late 1950's, his dad bought a Pontiac car. It had a V8 engine, and dual exhausts. We visited one of his boyhood friends, and in front of me he talked about how he and my dad blew up one of the mufflers on my grandfathers' Pontiac. When he said this, I looked at my dad: I'm not used to hearing him talked about this way! Apparently, my dad was quite the car guy until he turned 23. He blew two mufflers on his dad's Pontiac, and eventually graduated to driving his '63 Corvette split-window coupe up and down the steps of the main hall at Purdue University in 1964. And then he outran the cops. With my mother inside the car~

[I'm alive and 43 years old. How I managed to be born after that one I'm still not sure! Apparently my mother loved my dad a WHOLE LOT!]

Well, fast forward to 1985. My dad needs to replace the PINK [well, "Bimini Beige"] 1977 Cadillac Coupe de'Ville that we had as the family car for the past 6 years. It is getting old, and the the 12 mpg/20 second 0-60 time performance from the 7.0 liter V8 engine is starting to get to even my dad's attention. This is a guy who bought a 1980 chevette because he liked it. This chevette? Me and my mom used the Cadillac to pluck him off I-75 in Michigan one morning because the chevette died. It died due to the fact that the front pulley fell [yes...FELL!] off the engine one morning.

Dad's solution to the problem of finding a new car, considering all the problems above? He bought a 1984 Pontiac 6000 from Avis. A former rental car....

Hello? Can you think of anything more crazy than this? I was all over him. He insisted in buying an American car, and told me that the rental car companies sold their cars on the cheap even though they were GREAT cars. Sure it was a great car: a few months later the tires on the front end were BALD. He went to have it aligned, and they the shop told us it couldn't be aligned, because the engine was approximately 30 mm to the right of where it should be. That works out to about 1.25 inches. You could see this easily when you opened the hood- the engine was a 2.8 liter V6 transversally mounted, and you could see a "dog bone" engine mount that went from the front head to the front cross-member above the radiator. It sat at an angle; It was supposed to be straight!

Dad's cheap-ass solution: Instead of taking the car back....he just made the major complaint and then received a $2000 rebate on the car from Avis, which works out to about 33% of what he paid. [Maybe dad isn't so stupid afterall!]. He put K-mart tires on the car every year, and that worked. We put about 15k miles each year on that car, and since the front tires were about $25 each...he made out like a bandit. They drove that pile of scheize for 5 years like that~

LOL! My dad! He drives a 2003 Explorer now. He says it helps his back. What is funny is that he probably spends more time in my mom's 2003 Passat 1.8T, and doesn't complain about his back despite the time spent in that car.

So long Pontiac. Or more correctly- good riddance!

N!