Bizon Hunting: Dream Cars, Part 1

In the summer of 1996 just after completion of my sophomore year of college, I left Chicago to spend the summer in northern California. My uncle is a doctor and he got me a job at Mad River Hospital. I bought a one-way ticket as I was determined to buy a vehicle and drive across country at the end of the summer, something I had always wanted to do. I was putting myself through college and had no money to buy any car, let alone my dream car. I sat down with my uncle and asked him what I should be looking for, my only criteria at this point were that it must be economical and reliable. He stated immediately: “You need a Nissan Sentra; Dan (my cousin) had one and it was bullit proof. He refused to change the oil just to prove it didn’t care if it had fresh oil or old oil. The wheel bearing on the back wheel had frozen up and the wheel was just spinning on the axle but it kept going”.

So my dream car became a Nissan Sentra. I scowered over the paper every day, looking intently for a car in my price range. We looked at many and by the end of July I found a 1991 E model with standard transmission, no AC, no power locks, entry, windows or steering. A woman about my age at the time had been convinced by her hippie boyfriend that it should be sold so that she could buy a car “without computers and stuff; a car that I can actually climb into the engine compartment to work on”. How someone can be convinced to give up a car that doesn’t break down in the first place for one that will just so you can work on it yourself is a mystery (the boyfriend wanted to buy a late 50s, early 60s Ford pick-up). My grandpa loaned my 5k to buy it, my dad freaked out when he learned it had no power steering or air conditioning, and I loved it.

So end of the summer came, I bought a Rand McNally guide book and plotted my course. My girlfriend at the time flew out from Chicago to make the trip back east with me. I can’t tell you how great that trip was, I had never been to Yellowstone National Park before, I had never seen the Rocky Mountains or the Badlands of South Dakota. My little red Sentra had fascilitated a great adventure and I will always remember her for that. That car never broke down, not once in the 10 years that I owned it. My dad changed the fuel filter at 125,000 miles and remarked: “I’ve never seen a fuel filter that packed with a car still driving”. He actually cut it in half with a bench grinder just to see the insides for himself. I drove it until March of 2005, the time had come to set nostalgia aside for a car that I really wanted and did not need.