Worst. Car. Ever.

Now that I'm a Manhattan-dwelling, tiny apartment-living mass transit user, I have no need for a car, but ah, the memories. Memories of jumpstarts, broken alternators, leaky radiators and frequent trips to the repair shop. Though I've had several sweet rides in my time, each with their own "character", one particular specimen of automotive anti-luxury stands out as the main offender:

After college graduation, I needed wheels. The solution to my transportation problem came in the form of a '92 2-door Dodge Shadow (six years old with only 7 previous owners), in a shade of metallic electric blue that scraped your retinas. This car, definitely not this color:

I have no idea where it came from, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was dredged it from a lake (my folks got it on a "really good deal"). I'm pretty sure someone was murdered in the back seat, and you could peel the paint off the sides in sheets. We sometimes did it for fun. The passenger side door wouldn't open, no matter how hard you kicked it from the inside. It was a foxy, boxy beauty.

I had this car less than a month. It made the trip from college to the new digs (about 250 miles) without completely falling apart, but two (very brave) friends and I decided to drive it another 250 miles to the beach the next day. About two hours into the trip, we begin to smell an ominous, acrid stench. We were going up a hill on the interstate when we hear chucka-chucka-bang-BANG! as that damn Shadow dropped its guts on the highway going 60mph. I swerve off at the exit we were passing, and we make it to the bottom of the ramp before the engine blows completely. So there we are, by the side of the road in a scary little redneck town in NC, with a still-smoking wreck of a car.

After walking to a gas station and calling a towing service, we got the thing hauled into the nearest garage. I asked the mechanic if he could fix it, and laughed in my face. I believe his exact words were, "I'll be lucky if they'll give me $20 for it at the scrap yard". Quickly, I decided to dump it, but not before giving it a couple kicks that left impressive dents. Two rental cars and seven hours later, we finally got to the beach. Afterward, I promptly replaced the Shadow with an old yet decent BMW 5-series. That car eventually sucked pretty bad, too, but no other car in the world has ever, can ever or will ever be a bigger piece of shit than that '92 Shadow. After suffering the Shadow and cars of its ilk, I'm actually glad to be subway-dependent.