flashquake Nonfiction

DARTH VEGA
by Peggy Duffy

My first car was a 1971 red Vega purchased in 1973 for $800. The previous owner, a fellow high school graduate, had paid $2000 for the car brand new just 20 months before. That should have been my first clue something was amiss.

Nevertheless, my boyfriend and future husband (car advice notwithstanding) drove the car home, tuned it up and declared it a fine running vehicle. It had a peppy 2-liter, 4-cylinder, overhead cam, aluminum engine. The aluminum engine construction was an innovative design development. It would prove to be a major design flaw.

That well-tuned car remained a fine running vehicle for about two months. One day the engine didn't respond to my practiced synchronization of clutch and gas pedal. It didn't surge, but it didn't quite sputter either. Sort of had this sluggish reaction.

My amateur car mechanic boyfriend stared in puzzlement at the black gunk coating one of the spark plugs he'd put in, decided it was probably defective and replaced it with a new one. The following month we went through a similar scenario, this time with a little less puzzlement, and again the month after that. This sudden fouling and failure of the spark plugs became a habitual cycle, one we no longer met with bewilderment but with dreaded expectation.

Somewhere between the second and third fouled plug, the car's left door stopped opening for no determinable cause. I had to climb in through the passenger side and slide over the emergency brake and stick shift to get to the driver's seat. One frigid January, in the early hours of the morning, I left work and walked across the dark parking lot. I slipped my key into the passenger door, hopped over the icy cold vinyl of the bucket seat, my crotch expertly avoiding those between-the-seat hazards, only to discover about five minutes into warming up the engine that it was just as frigid inside the car as it was outside.

The Vega was heatless.

It was also burning. Oil that is, and at a fantastic rate. My boyfriend was dumping quart after quart into the engine more often than he was replacing spark plugs. Thick, white, viscous smoke blew out the tailpipe when I drove, becoming thicker and denser whenever I stopped for a traffic light. Now these were city streets with a light at the end of every block, all programmed to turn red as a car approached them.

This was also a time when people were becoming environmentally aware, and they didn't hold back on the accusatory looks as I sat at these red lights, engine idling, surrounded by a mushroom cloud of unburned hydrocarbons. I admit it. I am single-handedly responsible for polluting a small section of the Bronx that year. I assume no responsibility for New Jersey, however.

Eventually I had to face the truth. The car was worth more on the books than on the streets. I started to leave the Vega with its doors unlocked and windows rolled down, key chain dangling from the ignition like an open house party invitation. Soon I stopped bothering to turn off the engine, double-parking while I did my errands, aiming to make the car an easy get-away vehicle.

I knew no self-respecting car thief would be enticed because, short of a replacement engine, the car was undriveable without constantly replenishing water and oil. These cars had a reputation on the streets. But I hoped some desperate drug addict might drive the Vega off for parts so I could collect on the insurance. I came to realize, however, that when you own a three-year-old car predisposed to a cracked aluminum engine, resulting in water from the cooling system leaking into the oil, there aren't enough cars out there in good enough working order to require parts.

We ultimately pawned the Vega off on an eager car dealer who offered, sight unseen, to give us $100 toward a trade-in on a new Subaru. Half a mile from the dealership, my boyfriend turned off the engine and coasted into the parking lot. The salesman came running out of the showroom, frantically waving us and the car away. Fortunately we'd had the forethought to remove the license plates. As we both leapt in turn out the passenger door, the salesman screaming, "No, no, I can't take it," my boyfriend said, "Too late. We've already cancelled the insurance and returned the plates."

We left the key in the ignition and settled for $50.

Copyright 2003 by Peggy Duffy

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