I used to drive a Ford Taurus (yes, lame - I know). It was a 1990 model and belonged to my dad before it was officially mine. Pictured here is the back of the car, which I had slathered with bumper stickers at a time when I had an aversion to blank surfaces and felt the need to cover them with displays of one kind or another (at one point I also collected the McDonald's Monopoly game pieces and stuck them all to the steering wheel).
I began driving the Taurus in high school during my Junior year. My dad was on business in Italy much of the time, so his car was sitting around collecting dust and I had nobody to drive me to school, as my mom had to drive my younger brothers to their school in the mornings. So I drove the Taurus. We paid $40 for the school parking permit (you can kind of see it in the picture, under the Scooby Doo sticker in the bottom right corner of the window), which is crazy considering I paid $5 for my college parking permit... but then again, my brother recently paid like $200 for a one semester parking permit. Anyway... I drove the Taurus to school and to work, and then when it was time to go to college, I had to leave it behind because my dad was back from Italy.
That lasted about two months. I had the roommate from hell who had a car, and I didn't want to rely on a pot-smoking beer drinker to get me to Wal-Mart safely. So my parents decided I could have the car, and my dad got himself another car... a 1991 Tarus (*sigh*... he didn't learn his lesson and still drives yet another Taurus, a 1996 model. The windshield wiper motor has consistently broken in all three Tauri {my plural form of Taurus}) . So I had a car... reunited with my old pal, the Taurus.
Aura Lee, my good roommate that I had for three of my four college years, had a Chevy car. It was purple (although she insisted that we say it was 'dark cherry'). She also had a bottle of nail polish in the exact same color (good if she needed a touch-up, I suppose). The nail polish company decided to sound trashy and call that particular color "Tramp." So we called Aura Lee's car Tramp. And my car became O'lean (you know that stuff that's in the lowfat chips that can cause intestinal distress, also known as Olestra?). Say the names of the two cars together and you'll understand why we picked O'lean.
I had many good times with that Taurus - it made it over 100,000 miles somehow. I think I was driving it on the Perimeter in Atlanta at the time, so I couldn't pull over to take a picture unless I wanted the car to get smashed and never go any further past 100,000. I also drove my dad's 1991 Taurus over 100,000 sometime before mine made it that far. For some reason, I was driving his Taurus on the loop in Athens on the exit for Epps Bridge Road when it happened; maybe I was driving my dad's Taurus because my Taurus was getting new tires or something?? My boyfriend and our friend who were with me in the car were thoroughly unimpressed over my extreme excitement of being the one to drive it over the 100,000 mile mark. And the third Taurus has beaten the odds as well and made it to well over 100,000... it's the only one that I didn't drive as it turned over to 00,000. You see, Ford never really expected these cars to make it this many miles, so they only put a maximum of 99,999 on the odometer. So it looked like our first two Tauri had very few miles on them in the late 1990s.
So, here's how my car finally bit the dust... I had just gotten married less than a month before, and I was driving to work, which was 30 minutes from my home. The car stalled at the first of three lights that I had to go through. I managed to get it to start again. It stalled at the second light, and once again, I got it to start, even though I saw that the temperature gauge was reading pretty hot. I just wasn't interested in being stranded at 7:15 in the morning. At the final light, one mile from the school where I worked, it gave up. I was fortunate that a police officer noticed me and helped to push the car over to the shoulder of the road. We called a local shop there, and they towed it and replaced the termometer and some other pointless repairs. As I drove it home the next day, it started overheating again, but didn't stall. Very soon after, it just died. We figured it was a blown head gasket, which you don't bother repairing on a car that's only worth maybe $1000.
But wait - the Taurus had potential life in it yet! My husband works with a charity organization that needed a car for their foster kids to drive. They'd wrecked their Taurus wagon, and the body damage wasn't worth fixing. But they had a great engine! So we had the car towed to them in Alabama and they had the engine put in it. My Taurus had a second chance!
My Taurus even returned to me one magical night. My husband had to go to this foster home in Alabama to deliver some stuff, and the U-Haul broke down and he was stranded. Seeing as U-Haul has crappy customer service, he didn't want to wait around for 12 hours for them to come up with a solution. So the Taurus was loaned to him! I was so excited to see my old buddy, but I didn't drive it. I looked it over carefully though, to make sure they were taking care of it. My husband had to return it a couple days later.
Sadly, I later learned that one of the kids had driven it off the road and between two trees. I got to see the photos of it. But that was the final straw for the old Taurus. It was gone for good this time.
