My days as a wagon owner started almost a year ago at the beginning of WF09 and let me start by saying that by no means am I a car guy even though when I bought the wagon I was working for GM at the time on polymers used in their Fuel Cell Vehicle. (photo below) Here's my story on how I became a proud owner of a 1995 DCM Caprice Woody.
For decades now, I have been hanging with Jay (jayoldschool) and have been a first hand witness, co-pilot and wingman to many trips and adventures in all of his sleds and most of my car stories have an element of "hey Jay I've got this funny sound coming from my engine" or "hey Jay check out how I hooked up my new car stereo!" My first car belonged to my parents that they picked up as a second family car, a rust orange 1981 Toyota Tercel Hatchback. I drove the car like it was a Porche and fell in love with hand-break turns and reverse donuts in the winter. In the summer I would wash and clean the car every weekend and bought a stereo-cassette player for it but couldn't figure out how to keep the clock from not resetting every time I turned the car off. Without the help of a wiring harnesses, I did what any (ok not any) guy with no experience and 8 feet of electrical wire would do – I ran it out the drivers side window and under the hood and wired it straight into a live fuse, naturally. After pulling into the school parking lot and calling Jay over, he inspected my handy-work and looked at me with serious disapproval. Needless to say, we rewired it a few days later. To bad I was really excited that I could listen to the radio with the engine off and the key out.
The next car in the line up was the one my wife-to-be was driving when I met her. She happens to be Jay's cousin and was cruisin' in a sweet 1985 Chevrolet Chevette. (she named it Nester, don't ask me why.) I think back now that we were destined to be wagon owners because the 4-door Chevette hatch-back was really just a shortened wagon (well not quite!). We had some awesome road-trips and a few mishaps. I fondly remember one winter that it sat with a dead battery for 3 months in Jay's mother's driveway where we would just sit in it and smoke cigarettes because we couldn't smoke in the house…Nester saved us from serious frostbite during that long, nasty Canadian winter. When we finally had the money to get it back on the road, I cleaned out 57 empty packs of smokes from the back…terrible. Here's a pic of the Chevette, I forgot it had whitewalls. What a sweet mini-wagon.
The first car I actually bought was probably the most popular car in Canada at the time, a brand new black 1998 Chevrolet Cavalier Z24, manual and was a great car for a long time. Affordable when I bought it as a student and dependable right up to the day I sold it, just 4 months ago! I realized after shopping for the wagon that an old used car that hasn't been rusted out is an amazing find and I'm done with purchasing new cars and throwing all that money away. Here's a picture of the Z24 the day before I sold her. Quebec wanted a ridiculous amount of money to pass the safety, but Ontario pretty much took it straight-up.
My appreciation for the ability to keep sleds and big cars on the road has been around since the days of Jay's Blue Flame (81 Impala). Check his LROM write –up from just this past December 09. I've come to realize that with some T.L.C. these cars can last a long time, with the journey of finding and fixing being a big part of the fun.
So it was while I was an owner of a 1998 Z24 Cavalier and a 2003 Saturn Vue (wife's DD) that my search for a wagon began. The realization hit me after a vacation to the beach with Jay when I had just finished packing the Vue with tetris like skill, that he did not require any assistance packing his wagon despite the fact that he was taking home boogie boards, beach chairs, four tires, rims, luggage, and a tonne of outlet mall purchases. Unbelievable! That was it. I knew I had to have a wagon. As it happened, the search was relatively easy.
l began the hunt, looking at locals in Rochester and found a few and took them for test drives. But each was either too rusty, or too much work was needed. Then I was introduced to Ruphrax at the beginning of WF09. What a great guy. I was extremely lucky in that not only did he have a great wagon for sale, but he was close by. It was love at first sight. Buying the 1995 DCM Woody from Ruphrax was pretty much an easy decision. The wagon is in great shape with only 75,000 miles and absolutely clean on the inside. I drove it for a few months and tucked it away for the winter and its now registered and plated in Québec where I am currently living. It's my summertime daily driver and after the initial apprehension of driving it in Montréal (think Formula 1 with lots of potholes), I feel really safe in my metal tank surrounded by cars that are typically half the size.
So that's my story. I look forward to all the maintenance work and planning : trim redo, possible tire/rim search, leather upgrade and then we'll look at some engine mods as the need arises. Thanks Ruphrax for the hook-up and look forward to future road trips to WF.
Cheers,
MacWoody
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Mon May 31, 2010 10:17 pm
