Cutlass Ciera: The Untamable Beast

Can Be Seen Abandoned in an Alley Near YouI thought that only two owners and 80,000 miles was a great feature. I was unaware that the first owner was an 85-year-old woman who drove 500 miles and the second owner drove the rest with maximum speed and recklessness. I've heard that the last owner was an amateur drag racer, and once beat a Ford Mustang in a race. More than honor was left behind with the car. The bald tires sat on crooked wheelbases. Every tube connected to the engine was ruined, and an overheating something-or-other was constantly covering my windshield in a smokescreen. I bought a cell phone for this car. AAA knew my name. The steering was uncomfortable at best, it required three complete circles of the wheel to turn left, to go right… two.

The owner bragged about the new rear windshield and the fixed front windshield, but never mentioned he did it himself. If it rained, you were soaked because their abomination of car surgery was done so poorly. And if it freezes? Imagine the most beautiful icicle coming off an old oak tree. Now imagine it hanging from the epicenter of dangling cloth and crumbling insulation you claim to be a car ceiling. Nothing like chiseling a pillar of ice off your driver side seat before driving to class. The owner never bothered to fix the defrost systems, both front and back. I drove through downtown every morning with my window rolled down and my head sticking out, because it was impossible to get the inch of ice off the front. And it was cold that winter. People thought I was purposefully styling my hair to freeze sticking straight back every morning in some sort of icy pompadour. I once crashed into a dumpster behind me in December because the ice was so thick on the rear windshield. "But couldn't you see it in your side mirrors?" Yes, if one mirror wasn't permanently facing down and the other hadn't gotten ripped off when a drunkard driving a green car ran into the side as it was parked on the street one night. I know it was green due to the long forest green gash he left along the 146-inch side of my land yacht.

I bought this automobile in spring, and in the first nine months I put roughly 3,000 dollars in repairs, triple the original price. I thought the worst had passed, I had replaced everything. But the car had one more gift to give two days before Christmas. It was the gift of giving, as in me giving the contents of the car to whoever broke in. And whoever broke into the vehicle knew exactly what was inside. He (I think it was the original owner) busted out a window, and took the CD player and the speakers in the back, while not wasting time checking areas of fruitless potential, like the front speakers. To get into the trunk the original owner and his squad of cronies busted my rear window and bent my backseat (a one-piece frame and cushion) in half. Imagine my chagrin when I saw the backseat of my car lying in the road in a pile of broke glass, school work, and the ashtray he ripped out in order to gain my stash of lose change. The entire seat was bent metal-frame-out creating an automotive egg roll on a decorative dish of my belongings. All this carnage and the attacker did not realize the doors were unlocked.

I attempted to fix the car. I taped-up the broken windows and diligently tried to unfold the flimsy backseat. But no matter how much I tried to put the car back in order, I could no longer love her. The quirky innocence of all the original problems seemed irreverent, things had gotten out of hand-I was dealing with rape. When a loose piece of metal stabbed through the backseat I felt uncomfortable with passenger safety. A week later all the fuses simultaneously burnt out in a dramatic show equal to a meteor shower. Driving across town every morning, alone, in silence from the gap where my CD player was once lodged, along with the nonexistent sound of my dead turn signals, the heat broken with two shattered windows, and my head jutted out, I realized our time was past.

Alexander and his powerful horse traveled across the known world, conquering every civilization they faced, my ride had troubles leaving the suburbs. His horse lived thirty years and upon Bucephalus' death a city was named after him. I owned mine for a year before I decided I couldn't handle the curse of such a car. It took Alexander five minutes to dominate his beast, but no one could ever control mine. Cutlass Ciera: A truly untamed beast.

– Ian "Salmon Season" Golding (@iggolding)