Thursday, March 23rd, 2006

Sponsored by Looney Labs

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It's almost 20 years old and it's got a bunch of problems, but it still runs, it's purple, and it has a crystal gear-shift knob. It's the Emperor's purple jalopy, and it's for sale this week on eBay.

It's a 1987 Dodge Omni. As of this moment, it's got 146,272 miles on it. It's my first car... I bought it new in the fall of 1986, and at the time, it was black. My wife Kristin got it painted purple for me as a birthday gift in 1995. They said the color ("plum crazy") would fade after a year or two, but they were wrong -- it's still a lovely shade of purple, ten years later. (Around that same time, the headliner was also replaced.)

As I said, it still runs -- I drove it to the post office earlier today. But it's got issues. It stalls easily and the peculiar smells make me worry that it won't pass the Maryland Emissions Test, which I'm supposed to submit it for by April 12th.

I love this car. I've been to many places and have had many adventures with this car. It's a workhorse. But it's falling apart. The stereo's broken. The passenger-side wind-shield wiper is broken. It's got a manual transmission and I'm starting to have trouble getting it into second gear, suggesting another clutch/transmission replacement will be needed before too long. (It's had a couple before.)

I've never had a major accident with this car, though it does have a couple of dents from minor scrapes. The tires are old and I occasionally need to re-inflate them. When it rains, water drips in through the corner of the windshield over the driver's head, which has resulted in a small hole having rusted through under the gas pedal.

A few years ago, the gear-shift knob came off in my hand. I pushed it back on, but later I discovered I could take one of the glass door-knobs from a door we'd eliminated in our house and screw it onto the gearshift lever. It was a perfect fit! It's a minor point, but I have to say it's been really fun driving a car with such a fancy and unusual gear-shift knob.

That said, when I list all its problems, it seems like this car shouldn't be headed anywhere except to the junk yard. Indeed, my beloved old purple car no longer seems worth fixing even to me, hence my decision to go ahead and get rid of it now, rather than fixing it in the face of impeding Emissions Testing. But maybe someone out there likes tinkering with old cars enough to take on the challenge here.

Included is a set of 3 big books: the official 1987 Service Manuals. If you buy this car, you'll need to be thinking a lot about repairs, so these big, thick (and slightly bent-up) volumes might be of great use to you. They cover:

• Wiring Diagrams
• Engine, Chassis, Body
• Electrical Fuel & Emissions

Needless to say, you'll have to pick this item up from its current location, the driveway at our house in College Park Maryland (near Washington DC).

Last year I was offered $50 for this car by CarMax, so I'll start the bidding there.

So, does anyone want my old purple car?