The Maroon Marauder

Although Grandma's car was the first automobile that I "owned," this was my first car: "The Maroon Marauder."

Before I bought the Maroon Marauder, I was stuck driving the other cars in my family's fleet... and that left some things to be desired.  Dad had a take-home police car that he took everywhere.  Sure, an unmarked police car wasn't in every family's driveway, but it wasn't like I was going to drive the Ford Crown Victoria to school, whether it had red-and-blue lights or not (it did).

We did have a truck.  A 1976 GMC Sierra Grande three-quarter-ton 4x4 pickup.  In gold.  Unfortunately, that particular model had a design flaw that allowed dirt and water to collect in the fender behind the wheel well, causing rust.  Our truck being a farm-truck, the rust was in full swing by the time I was old enough to drive it:  large holes had formed in the fender behind each wheel.

Then, there was the family car.  It was the car I learned to drive in and took my driver's test in.  It was also the most un-cool car my family had ever owned.  It was a K-Car.  More specifically, it was a white 1986 Dodge Aires wagon.

If you're reading this and unfamiliar with K-cars, here's the deal:  In the 80's, the Chrysler corporation was on the verge of bankruptcy.  Bailed out with federal loans, it introduced a series of cheap cars that Americans could afford.  Known as "K-cars," these Dodge, Chrysler, and Plymouth models were inexpensive and functional. Chrysler sold a lot of them.
They were also less than exciting to either drive or look at, particularly in white-wagon form.  Four cylinders and a three-speeed automatic churning out a whopping 97 horsepower.  AM/FM radio with new-fangled digital numbers. It was efficient.  It was spacious.  It was not the car a 16-year-old boy wanted to be driving.  
"Why?  Why do we own a wagon now?" I remember thinking.  It wasn't like we had never had a cool or interesting car for the family.  When I was little, we briefly owned a 1978 Chrysler Brougham Coupe.

To be fair, in 1990 it wouldn't have had the retro-cool factor it might carry today--it probably would have just been seen as the gas-guzzinlg land-yacht it was.  Which is probably why my family traded that car for the next family ride:  A 1979 Honda Civic.  This was the antithesis of the Chrysler.  It also signaled Mom's assumption of of car-buying responsibility for the family.  Dad had apparently gotten a "great deal" on the Chrysler, and brought it home without consulting Mom.  Timing couldn't have been worse as the second world oil crisis hit in 1979.  Out went the Chrysler, in came the Civic.

The Civic was TINY.  My sister had a habit of rocking in her seat when she was bored.  When sitting in the front seat of the Civic, her rocking forward and back would cause the entire car to rock up an down slightly.  She was in kindergarten at the time.

The Civic's tiny size eventually led to our family's acquisition of a 1981 Accord.  I loved it.  In fact, I believe that the Accord was the thing that started my interest in cars.  It was silver and shiny.  It had a 5-speed stick.  It had bucket seats that reclined.  THAT RECLINED!  As far as I was concerned, our Accurd was the most awesome machine to ever travel the roads of America.
Which is why, seven years later, my heart sank when we traded it in for the Dodge Aires K-Car wagon.
It was the summer before junior year of high school, and I had the following options:  catch a ride in my father's unmarked police car, ask to borrow the K-car wagon, or drive the rusted-out farm truck.
I needed to buy my own car.

Enter the Maroon Marauder.  A 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme two-door.  It had a mere 90,000 miles on it when I bought it for $850.  We got it from a family friend who (no lie) had been using it to pull his horse trailer.  This explains why he had installed air suspension and a trailer hitch.  I could actually "jack up" the rear of the Olds using an air-pressure hose at the service station.
It had some other issues.  The white vinyl "landau" top (read: fake vinyl half-roof) was coming off in strips.  By the time I sold the car, I had pulled most of it off and tried to clean it all down to the painted roof underneath.  The paint itself was in bad shape.  I tried everything to make it look better, including rubbing the entire car down with WD40.  Do NOT try to rub a car down with DW40--that ruins the paint.  It did, however, take a layer of the oxidation off, which gave the car a brief moment of legitimate color.  A month later, it had faded back to original, spotty/bleached look.  Had the car been in proper shape, it would have looked like the one in the following pictures.  Mine did not.

The doors of the car were HUGE.  Heavy and long.  My friend joked that I could take out a pedestrian on the FAR side of the road if I ever opened the driver's door while driving.  He even came up with a name for the move, should we ever need to employ it:  just "door 'em."
It had an AM/FM radio, which allowed me to rock out as I thundered around the back roads of my hometown--provided I kept the balance turned over to the right side. The car had only one working speaker.
There were some mechanical problems.  The front shoulder-belts had been cut from the buckles.  I discovered this and, being a safety-conscious 16-year-old, sought to remedy the situation.  I fished the belts out of their winders and threaded them through the latch to connect them with the lap-belts.  To make sure they stayed put, I employed a combination of staples and hot glue.  (No, I am not in any specialized learning programs.)  The Marauder's engine mounts were loose or damaged, although I didn't know it at the time.  There was a terrible noise that the car made under heavy acceleration, which I believe today to have been the sound of the fan blades thrashing the fan-guard on the radiator as the 350-cubic-inch engine tipped back.  This tipping caused the engine to tear at the transmission, which I had to replace about a year after buying the car.  I sold my Honda dirt bike (a kid-sized XR80) to pay for it.

All in all, the Maroon Marauder served me well.  It got me to school, work, and activities (at 9 miles per gallon).  It gave me a sense of freedom I desperately needed as a kid living out in the county with no friends living in walking distance.  Most importantly, it gave me a set of wheels when I got to college two years later.  I was a college dude with wheels, and girls needed to get places.  This ultimately is what caught the attention of the love of my life--who happened to live in a room overlooking the spot I parked the Marauder.  I can't say that she was overly impressed with my set of wheels, but I had some and they gave me an excuse for me to offer her a lift someplace.  By that time, the Marauder was in poor shape.  The new transmission was starting to give me trouble, and the brakes would occasionally take the day off.  Adding fluid to both things solved the problems for the short-term, but the Marauder's days were numbered.  One night she and I actually painted hull-numbers on the side of the peeling landau roof to give the Marauder the proper boat-treatment it warranted.  I sold it later that year for $450.00.  It certainly wasn't my best car, but it it will remain my most memorable.