1996 Chevrolet Camaro - My Boys' Car

Last fall up here in Cleveland, what some would call "Indian Summer" ran right into the middle of November. It was one particularly warm, sunny morning that I took the 1996 Camaro my wife and I bought as an extra car for our teenage boys to use to the office instead of my Monte Carlo. I had the Monte off line as it was suffering through one of its biannual maladies and since the Camaro hadn't been used much since the end of August, what with the boys away at college, it could have used a good spin.

Remember the old saying about no good deed goes unpunished? Well, with the weather as nice as it was, I didn't need to have the heat on in the car. Had it been a chilly day, I would have had the heat on and I probably would have noticed before it was too late that there was no heat. The lower radiator hose had come off its fitting and all the coolant drained out the engine. Why'd this happen? Dammed if I or a half dozen mechanics I've consulted could tell me but no coolant meant no cooling and no tell tale heat. The engine over heated and blew out the head gaskets.

Ironic that the very type of thing that I worried about happening to our boys when they used the car would happen to me when I used it. And had it happened to them, as freakish as it was, I would've have been understanding and consoling whereas since it occurred to me on my watch, I was left feeling foolish and irresponsible. What's more, I was heartbroken.

While I was no less than mortified over a $2,700 repair estimate, and trust me, I've done enough research to determine that it's not something I'd want to handle myself, my heartache was not so much about the car and the expense to repair it but about what the car, selfishly, means to me. I miss our boys terribly but seeing "their Camaro" in the driveway, much like standing in their cluttered bedrooms they've left behind, is a reminder that they will be coming home from school soon. Albeit for a short while. I'm not ready to let them grow up and be adults just yet let alone get rid of a tangible link to when they were younger; the very thought of getting rid of "their car" made me sick to my stomach. Heck, with them away at school I can't even go into their bedrooms without first girding myself emotionally.

Since we didn't need the car for a while, I had time to not only "get over" the Camaro but figure out a best possible plan of action. That boiled down to, essentially, two things. Either fix what we have or start over with, as my wife has pointed out repeatedly, something more practical. She does have a point since a rear wheel drive, twenty year old Camaro in a snow city is not the best idea in the world. However, the expression on their faces when we first got it makes any inconvenience worthwhile.

Resigned to replacing it, I didn't feel spending the money to fix it worth it since the car is very rusty underneath, I set a budget slightly north of what it would have cost to do the repairs and searched for anything that looked decent. The process was arduous. Used car shopping a big enough pain when you have a decent budget to work with but when you've strapped yourself with next to nothing, it can be torture. There's a lot of junk out there and I don't miss the characters I met on Craigslist either. During my search, of course, I also looked at every 1993-2002 Chevrolet Camaro for sale between Toledo, Dayton, Columbus and Athens, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pickin's, as they say, were slim.

However, one day I came across the literal clone of what we had not thirty minutes to the south of us. With just 68,000 miles on its odometer and having originally been an "Arizona car" I couldn't get my checkbook out fast enough after I had it checked for purchase by a mechanic. The mechanic seeing the car was clean as it was told me if I didn't buy it, he would. While buying the "new" Camaro cost us about $500 more than what it would have cost us to repair the "old" one, from a glass is half full perspective, we've actually come out ahead seeing that this car has 30,000 less miles on it that our "old Camaro". It also has not a spec of rust. Something I can't say about our "old" Camaro.

I'm no fatalist but I'm nothing if not diligent; the harder you work the luckier you get. I'd would like to believe, though, that it was more than just sheer coincidence that I've been able to replace what we had with virtually the same thing. Fate or some higher power telling me that it's alright to miss our boys who are growing up way, way too fast. That higher power telling me that it's ok to hold onto whatever it is that you reminds me of them. If that makes me feel better about their growing up then so be it. Yes, it is just a car...but it's my boys' car.