My Black Beauty

She was my first major purchase after graduation.  My black 1994 Nissan Pathfinder SE, with the custom package and leather interior.  We had some really good drives together.  I remember washing and waxing it probably much more often than most normal people would do it.  I would condition the leather… steam clean the carpets… apply polish, wax, AND glosser in a ritual that would take around 4 hours at a time.  As she started getting on in years, I would make sure and repair every little thing that went wrong with her.  I once lost a little plastic “L” shaped piece of moulding on the rear window and searched a few junkyards for an identical part because the dealership didn’t carry it.  The guy at the junkyard didn’t even have a price for it because it was such an insignificant part.  He said I could have just walked away with it and he would have never known.  I gave him a dollar for it.  That was then…

165,000 miles later, she is really beginning to show her age.  She coughs and wheezes and has trouble getting going on cold mornings.  She reacts much slower than in her younger years and squeaks and squawks in places that never squeaked nor squawked before.  She is showing quite a few blemishes and a year ago her step runners virtually fell off from the rust.  But she’s mine and only I know how to handle her many many quirks.

And yes, I have a sexy, high-performance, spoiled-rotten speedster that is my everyday car now… but she will always have a special place in my heart.  When the day came to trade her in, the dealer practically insulted her with the price that she offered for her.  Don’t they count sentimental value anymore?  So I couldn’t bring myself to part with her.  So now she sits there in front of my house getting old… watching me as day after day I pick the speedster to drive to work.  I almost can’t look at her because I feel guilty that I drive her so seldomly now… mostly just for trips to BJ’s and in the snow and rain or on fishing trips.  Up until I got my new car, she looked and drove like a car half her age and mileage.  It was a point of pride for me on my car maintenance skills.  But I think she’s slowly losing the will to go on, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with her.

So this brings me to the explanation of the mystery picture.  It is actually the driver’s side door handle… or at least a large chunk of it.  I decided to drive the Pathfinder to work on Monday morning because there was still some snow on the ground from the previous day’s snow.  I don’t really know why… considering all the mechanical problems, it’s probably more of a death-trap than my other car is in the snow.  I reached the driver’s side, unlocked the door with the key (the fob stopped working years ago), and pulled on the handle…. SNAP!  What the…  yep, it just snapped right off, leaving just a little nub of a door handle that can actually still open the door.  I was sad.  This was just the latest of an enormous list of things that is now broken on my black beauty.  I guess it kind of drove home the point that she’s falling apart…  So I stood there for a minute… partly because I was trying to figure out how to get in the car, but mostly just sighing that the end is probably near.  She’s had a good 10 year run.  And as I drove to work that morning, with the door handle sitting there on top of the dashboard… I started listing the things that were wrong with the car in my head and just started to laugh.  She really did have a lot of… let’s say… personality… where if someone else were to try to drive her, they’d be befuddled and possibly in life-threatening danger.  HAHA!

So as a warning to potential drivers and as a tribute to the uniqueness of my black beauty, I will list her “personality quirks” now.

1. The glove compartment will not open.  The latch broke off and I had to choose to fix it so that it’s always open or always closed never to be opened again.  I chose the latter
2. If you slam the doors too hard, all the power locks may close – even with the key in the ignition.
3. Sometimes the power locks will not open, or if you try, they will close again immediately… even if you are manually opening them.
4. The oxygen sensor is such that if the temperature changes 20 degrees within a day, it may stall the car while you’re idling.  This is bad when you are pushing down the clutch in a high-speed turn because you would lose your power brakes, power steering and you’d be coasting.  Which gives you the option to either quickly restart the engine while you’re rolling out of control, or pop the clutch and try to restart the engine that way.  The former is a faster but unreliable option because of the following…
5. The starter is sometimes random on how many turns of the key it takes to start it.  It could be one… it could be twenty… it could not start until after you start crying and banging your head on the steering wheel.
6. On cold days, you may be able to open the windows but not close them… which is not good on cold days.
7. The driver’s side seatbelt will not retract unless you feed the seatbelt into the retractor.  I mean, it will still keep you from moving forward, but once you do, it will not move back.
8. The exhaust manifold is cracked… making it sound like an old jalopy when you accelerate… think… pfffthhh pfffthhh pfffthhh pfffthhh pfffthhh
9. The anti-lock brakes do not work anymore.  I found this out in the middle of a 30 yard skid into a busy intersection.  So now it’s back to the old “pump the brakes” method.
10. The throw-out bearing in the clutch is almost completely worn down so that if you hold down the clutch for too long while you’re coasting, it makes the same sound as a 2000 lb. sea-elephant in heat.
11. The tape player will randomly spit out whatever tape you’re playing (or CD adapter).. I guess it doesn’t like my music choices.

And I will just briefly list the rest…

• The clear coat on the paint on the hood is flaking off
• The speakers buzz like something is being fried
• The steering wheel makes a grinding noise if you turn it too much
• The step runners completely rusted off and the bumpers are getting that way too
• The radio antenna may or may not extend or retract depending on… I have no idea
• The sunroof seals whistle like a flute
• The tailgate is so rusted that I have to drop whatever I’m carrying to close it (and I’m a big guy)
• The tail hatch will not stay open.  I use an umbrella to prop it open
• And finally… my driver’s side door handle broke off

But I still love her… always will.