I’m not a “car” guy. I’m just not. For me if they crank and can safely get me from Point A to Point B then that’s pretty much the extent of my requirements from them. I keep them running and they get me where I want to go, no more, no less. As a result I’ve never really become attached to any that I’ve owned.

That is, with one notable if not small exception.

Some backstory. Due to circumstances beyond my control, when I went off to college back in 1981 I didn’t have a vehicle. As a result, I bummed rides off friends to get where I was going. 

I saved up enough money to buy a used beige diesel Volkswagen Rabbit at the beginning of my junior year. It got near 60 miles per gallon, didn’t have an air conditioner, and if the temperature got below 50 degrees it may or may not start, depending on the cooperation of the “glow plugs” (whatever the heck those are). I kept a bicycle on the back of ‘The Rolling Rice Krispy’ in case it wouldn’t crank and I had to get home.

In 1984, my good friend Tim Sherrod and I drove to the Indianapolis 500 together. Tim had friends who worked for the track and they had arranged for us to sleep in the press room the night before the race. It was there that I would lay eyes on the vehicle that would carve a place into my heart.

Behind that building sat the pace car for the race that year — the brand new Pontiac Fiero. The moment I laid eyes on that little thing I was smitten. A completely impractical two-seat mid-engine Hot Wheels car on steroids, I thought it was the coolest car I had ever seen.

Fast forward to 1985. I was approaching becoming the first person from my family to earn a college degree, and my grandfather, D.C. Duren, had heard me talk about the Fiero. So one day he made me an offer:

“You get that degree, and I’ll make a good down payment on one if you’ll take up the payments from there.”

Needless to say, I didn’t say no.

So in the spring of ‘85, I got my red Fiero. Manual transmission, all the bells and whistles. Over our 150,000 miles together “Christine” (the car’s nickname) became part of me. We went to Athens I don’t know how many times, to Atlanta, to Miami, Orlando, New Orleans, and Indiana several times. She took me and Risa on our honeymoon.

When she died of natural causes back around 1992 or so, I moved on to vehicles that were much more “family” friendly (in other words, that could seat more than two people and carry more than a bag of groceries). That Fiero became part of some of the most treasured memories I have — but it never left my heart. 

Fast forward 30 years. Every now and then over the last few years I would look around to see if anyone still drove the little cars. As the ’80s have become cool again it seems they’ve become quite fashionable again, too. I was really never interested in finding another one, mainly because the ones I saw that people were selling were essentially in junkyard condition.

So what happens? Two weeks ago while reading my Facebook messages an ad pops up: “1984 Fiero Indy Pace Car For Sale.” Lo and behold, it looked to be just like the one I had seen at the track, and in basically perfect condition — and just 20,000 miles on it.

My eyes widened. At that moment, knowing what the little tinge of excitement in my gut meant, I looked up and said out loud, “God, now don’t you do this to me.”

Please know that I am not an impulsive person at all. Not even close. In fact, I’m one of the most deliberate people I know regarding anything. But a car? A little car? Seriously?

Yes, seriously. Because this wasn’t just any car — this was that car, the first and only car that really, truly got under my skin.

You see, there’s a voice inside my head that I’m able to ignore 99.9% of the time. It’s that voice that keeps on telling me why I should do something that every other voice will be telling me not to do. Am I the only person that voice speaks to?

That voice said “reach out to the guy, what’s it going to hurt?” Not being able to help myself, I contacted the guy in Atlanta selling it. Turns out he’s had it on the market for a while, but has had a hard time finding a buyer.

Why? Because nobody knows how to drive a manual transmission vehicle anymore.

Cue the voice inside my head: “But you know how to drive one, don’t you?” As hard as I tried, I had no reasonable retort.

So now, I am doing everything I can to figure out how to pull this off. The voice inside my head says “you only live once” followed by “wonder what the going rate is for a kidney these days?”

Do I really need it? Of course not. But I’ll let you try to explain that to that voice inside my head that keeps telling me otherwise.

I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, anybody got any parachute pants they’re not wearing?