Tom thanks for picking me, sorry im late...busy weekend,
soooo, where do i start?
im not sure when it actually happend in my life. but the "big car bug" bit me big time at some point...i dont know what it was...maybe it was the 1973 dodge polara my grandpap had when i was a little kid (oddly the only non-Buick he ever owned, He is the reason for my love of the Tri-Sheild).
Maybe it was my dad selling Fords my whole life and seeing what a great car the Crown Vic was.
....Ford, GM.... hell these big cars never changed...so they had a lot of time to perfect them!
I am for the most part an only child, I have a half sister that is a little crazy (not in the fun way) and we dont talk.
and my parents divorced when i was only 3 yrs old. so being an only child, my mom never had a need for anything other than a 2 door car when i was a child. so she had a 1978 buick skyhawk, then a 1984 dodge daytona turbo z, and another buick skyhawk, this time an 88.
when I was 5 we moved to a little town south of Pittsburgh called West Elizabeth. Being a Car Nut from an early age I was (to the annoyance of my family) always aware of my vehicular surroundings to the point of obsession. well, we moved into a town house and i got cracking on the making friends end of things while my family unpacked, i was outside talking to the kid across the street when i heard the unmistakable sound of a GM powersteering pump going bad...i turn around, and see this car comming down the street...this beautiful , huge, behemoth of a car... the driver was the kid across the streets mother...the car was a 1976 Pontiac Grand Safari wagon. what blew my mind further was when she opened the back to get groceries out!!! i had never seen a clamshell tailgate in action before. Then, in 1988 my moms friend Deb Decided to get a Taurus wagon (she had 3 kids) but she didnt opt for the 3rd row seat. but it was 1988 and we didnt live in a Nanny state back then, so i have all these memories of riding in the cargo area! wow what a blast! this was the introduction to wagons in my life!
fast forward to 1993 and the blizzard thereof. my mom gets stuck in a snowbank with her 88 skyhawk, and has to hike 1.5 miles to her friends house in the blowing wind and 3 feet of snow, all at 10 pm! she came home the next day and declared she had anough and she is getting a 4x4.
so the following july she went out and bought a brand new 1993 jeep cherokee in (what turned out to be a very rare color) Navajo Turquoise Metallic over champagne gold. This cherokee was a wagon, (at least according to me and the state of Pa.) this became my first car, subsiquently, my first wagon.
when i was in high school i did what most car geek my age did during study hall. I read every automobile magazine i could get my hands on. and i remember seeing a story in one mag(dont recall which one) on of the 1994 Buick Roadmaster. while i was reading my buddy mac Leaned over my shoulder and said..."can you believe they are putting the LT1 in thos boats now?". Now i didnt know the ins and outs of an LT1 like i do now, but i knew at the time, the LT1 was this Legend of an engine.
i was in love with that Roadmaster and when i saw a wagon in person at the auto show that year, I must have been the only 14 yr old over at Buick wanting to sit in the wagon. I spent an hour looking and asking the GM rep all kinds of questions (Im sure he was thinking "this teen has some odd taste"). From that point on it was on my vehicular "bucket list". well i needed a new vehicle my 3rd freshman year of college after a bad wreck and shoddy repair bodywork ruined my cherokee. i looked for a Roadmaster but ..they were still too expensive and my mom wouldnt co-sign on finacing for one. so i bought what i could get for what i sold my cherokee for. my next car was a very rusty 93 jeep wrangler(one of my favorite vehicles i ever owned).
fast forward 8 years/20 cars later
the S10 Regular cab 2x4 i was driving was proving too small for my needs and was paid off. i said to my wife "I want a wagon".
Her response was "whatever". So i started looking for a Roadmaster, now the problem was finding one in good shape here in the rust belt. well after looking at a few "less than promising" examples around here (unfortunately on was my favorite color...MAB but too rusty) i found an expensive LDM roadmaster at Watson Buick GMC (about 100mi away)...after arguing with my wife for a day or two about it ...i left for Watson, bank check in-hand. and after a couple hours of haggling and demanding a rear-end leak be fixed....i left my trusty S10 and returned home in a 1 owner, 80k snowbird owned, dealer bought /maintained, 1996 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon! I had plans to Modify it but it was my only car (well kinda...shortly after i got it i sold my 1976 olds)and I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with it. well after putting a Winterless car through a hard PA winter, making various mods, and winning 2nd place full size buick class at Carlisle, we spent a lot of time showing my wife what winter does to a car like that...(and I had a lot of help from Mike H aka Scoob8000 who is like a brother to me) i managed to convince my wife to let me get a beater car! ...a couple years and a kid later...my wife will not let me get rid of the Buick...for a list of reasons...one of which was she sees how happy i am with it...after all TiKi is my pride and joy..and someday she will be Delaney's.
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Wed Nov 03, 2010 7:15 pm
