A Car Love Affair - My Story

[Dr. Love]

This story will be a long read for sure since it spans my entire life. I hope you an relate and enjoy:

Once upon a time there was a little moppy-headed 8 year-old tomboy who fell in love. Oh, this love wasn't the typical prince charming riding in on his steed with swords a'blazing. Her first love happened to have four wheels and a roaring engine.

When I was little, my brother (who was 13 years older than me) had the most amazing '68 and '69 Camaros. He would park his car in the front yard, all gleaming and bright. I remember him showing me a push-button start he had installed. That was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Sometimes he would give me a ride to the store. I remember be terrified and excited just like riding a rollercoaster as he drove the one-mile trip. The engine rumbled so loud, I just knew we were doing 100 (we were probably only doing 25 or 30). I remember watching him shift and the feel of the tug of the car as it slid from one gear to the next. I was absolutely in love with his car. I would walk around it and trace the SS badges with my fingers. I would marvel at the stripes. There wasn't another thing on the planet as fascinating to me as his car.

Fast forward eight years later. (My brother's canary yellow Camaro with black stripes had been sold years earlier to make a down payment on a house. Oh, the sacrifices one must make for family....) I was now able to drive and was about to get my first car. I knew that one day I would own a camaro, but it wasn't in the cards for me. I ended up with a '79 straight-6 Mustang. It was a good first car. The paint was faded, there was a dent in the passenger side door, and it was far from the envy of my friends, but it did get from point A to point B with no problems. Two years and several wrecks later, I was finishing high school.

Upon my high school graduation in 1992, I had the opportunity to finally purchase my first Camaro for a whooping $1500. It was a '79 blue Berlinetta, v-8, and automatic. I was the third owner. My mom co-signed on a loan at the bank, and it was all mine. This car was fantastic. I drove it for four years to college every day with almost no issues at all. Every day on my commute to school, I passed a Chevy dealership that always had these brand-new Camaros parked out front. Every day, I would almost get whiplash from staring at them. I promised myself as I drove by that I was going to have one of those when I graduated from college. In my family, I was the very first to go to college and most people really didn't think I would finish. You could say that the Camaro was one of my primary motivations for completing my degree.

As it turned out, after four years, I graduated with a degree in Elementary Education. I realized that I wasn't going to be able to buy a brand new Camaro. A first year teacher's salary wasn't going to be enough. However, a friend of my husband showed up at my house on a snowy February day with his freshly painted blue '87 Iroc-Z. It was gorgeous. The snowflakes were huge and the car looked like a sparkling sapphire in a snowglobe. A few weeks later, I found out that he was going to sell his car, and I knew I had to have it. Again, I went to the bank, got a loan, and the car was all mine. I ended up selling my '79 for $1000 to help offset the cost of the Iroc, which was only $4000.

I absolutely had the car of my dreams. It was like a brand-new car without the brand-new price tag. It had a brand-new paint job. It had custom upholstery. A banging stereo with huge speakers in the hatch. It had remote start. It had custom wheels. It had everything.

Life was perfect until about a month after I bought the car. Everything came apart. The transmission went out. It was rebuilt. It tore up again. I had it fixed again. The alternator went out. It was replaced and the second one went out. The radiator got a crazy hole in it. It was replaced only to have the electric fan loose a bolt or something and eat a hole in the new radiator. Radiator two was installed and the fan fixed. I ended up maxing out a credit card trying to keep the car on the road. I used to laugh and say it was the prettiest car in the world on the back of a tow truck.

After about 6 months of crazy repairs, I ended up trading for a '95 Mustang GT. It was a good car, but not a Camaro. After a while, I let my husband take over that car and we bought a blue '94 Z-28. It was not the car I had hoped for. Automatic - not a stick. That car turned out to be a disaster as well.

Long story short, I finally gave up on sports cars. By now I had two small children, a mortgage, student loans to pay back, and life in general going on. I somehow ended up in a four door Escort wagon that my husband had the gall to say "You look good in that car" about. Oh, how those words stung. Even though I had resorted to four door life - Cutlass, Intrepid, 4-Door F150, I hadn't quite given up on the dream of my brand-new Camaro. I had the rest of my life to purchase my new car, right?

Then the news came. You may as well have said the end of the world was coming. Chevrolet announced that they were discontinuing the Camaro line. All I could think of was, "How could they?" I knew that I would never own a new Camaro. After this devastating news, I kept moving forward, going back to graduate school to earn my master's, and specialist degrees in education. I would think about cars and be saddened that the best I might do is a rebuilt used Camaro. I was even thinking maybe someday I could do my own car.

In 2007, I decided to go back to work on my doctorate. This was about the time I had heard the Camaro was in the works to be produced again. I was ecstatic. I had made up my mind to finish my doctorate by the time the new Camaro was launched in 2010, and it was going to be my graduation present to myself.

Sounds like a great plan, right? Well, if you know me, you know how cheap I am and that I would never make a huge impractical car purchase like that. However, the idea that I could get this Camaro was one of my driving forces for finishing my degree. December 2009, was the end of school for me. I had finished school...all of it...the very end and graduated with a Doctorate degree in education. Most would have thought I would have been at the dealership straight away to get my much deserved reward. Nope. I had my old reliable 4-door Intrepid and didn't need a car.

Christmas came and went that year. In January of 2010, I pulled up at my work one morning and everyone in my school was buzzing about "Whose new blue car sitting out front?" I went out there and knew immediately whose car it was. It was my brand new Aqua Blue Metallic SS Camaro. My husband had ordered it for me and parked it at my work as a surprise. It was gorgeous and completely unexpected. He had bought me the car of my dreams. It was one of the last ABM cars produced in 2009. I am keeping it completely stock. There is not a single thing I want to change on it. It is a beautiful tribute to a little girl's first love and it is perfect just the way it is! It stays in the garage is very pampered. I plan to keep this car until I die.

[RED DEMON SS]

Very beautiful color choice and welcome to Camaro5 and the Permagrin Club!

[Dr. Love]

Thanks. I have always loved blue cars, especially Camaros.

[Dr Jkel]

This is a great story........It is nice to see great things happen to great people.