My brother suggested I do an entry on my first car. Why? Because it was a piece of shit. My first motor vehicle was a 1988 Dodge Aries K station wagon.

Just like this one, except it was gray.

As you may have guessed, it was originally my father’s car. My dad’s always been a big proponent of station wagons; they were convenient for family vacations and such, and they get better gas mileage than minivans. In fact, he still drives one today, and makes use of the storage space when he buys stuff for the house.

I learned to drive on the Aries K. My folks’ other car at the time was a 1991 Plymouth Acclaim sedan, but I was lucky to ride in that thing, let alone drive it. So, the station wagon was my hell on wheels. Allow me to wax poetic on the various quirks with that car that drove me up the wall.

First of all, the air conditioning sucked. Being a station wagon, it goes without saying that it’ll take while to cool down the whole thing, anyway, but the AC in that jalopy wheezed like an old man, and took forever to kick in. The same goes for the opposite effect: the heat. During my winter breaks in college, I’d obviously have to spend the month working to scrape together some extra cash; driving twenty minutes or so in the freezing cold in a car with barely functioning heat is not fun at all. Actually, the heat would kick in…right as I pulled up to my employer. Fucking worthless.

Next up was the sound system, or rather, the miserable excuse for one. The radio worked fine; the cassette and CD player did not…because they didn’t fucking exist! Somehow, this car was equipped with an AM/FM radio only. Being a broke college student, I didn’t have the then-necessary large sums of cash to buy a proper car stereo, so I was shit outta luck. I’m not a big fan of the radio, so you can imagine how much fun drives of longer than half an hour were for me. Not only that, the rear speakers had crapped out some time ago, and they tended to buzz and crackle annoyingly. (I eventually just disconnected them.)

How about the car’s lack of power? It had a straight-four engine. In a small car, that’s no big deal, but in a station wagon…holy shit, was that thing slow as dust. The acceleration was poor enough to annoy other drivers behind me at red lights! Granted, I wouldn’t slam the pedal to the floor, but a little pep would’ve been nice. It got considerably worse when the car was laden down with cargo, too. Since the car was a station wagon, it had a large turning radius, which made pulling into smaller parking spots a real chore. Backing in was impossible, as was parallel parking, but I avoided those whenever possible. (I didn’t even have to do them for my driving exam, and yes, I drove the wagon for that, too.)

Last but not least…the car wasn’t exactly a chick magnet. Personally, I think the amount of value that the common man puts on his car in order to “get” a woman is rather ridiculous, but when your car’s so crappy that the female population snickers whenever you’re seen in the damn thing, then you’ve got a problem.

The car wasn’t all bad; the extra storage space was nice (especially during my college years), and it rarely had any severe problems. The beast finally started to seriously break down in 2001, and by then I actually had the money to buy a new car. (And by “new,” I mean “used.”) I joined the rest of the populace in driving a sedan, and I’ve been able to blend in with normal people ever since.

Do I miss the old Aries K wagon? Maybe a little bit, but then I remember the constant grief that car caused me, and the memories are promptly flushed away. Rust in pieces!