Dogs and automobiles define periods of our lives. Most everything momentous during their tenures involves one or the other and, ideally, both. John Pearly Huffman has a piece at Road & Track wiping some manly tears away as he watches his Toyota Tundra of 27 years carry his firstborn son off to build a life for himself in Texas (another on the U-haul Trail out of California).
He begins:
It was an impulse buy. My 1997 T100 pickup had less than 6000 miles on its clock and nothing wrong with it. But in early 1999, I attended the press launch for the new Toyota Tundra and swooned. The Tundra spoke to my soul: straightforward in engineering, easygoing in temperament, and casual in decoration. Plus, it had a V-8.
So, in May 1999, the day the new 2000 Tundra went on sale, I went to Toyota of Santa Barbara to buy one. And I did. Almost 27 years later, I’m still in Santa Barbara. But my truck has moved to Austin, Texas. It took my son, his girlfriend, and his dog with it. I miss my son. I really miss my truck.
Read the rest here.
It’s good, good stuff. My first car was a 1997 Buick Park Avenue. I fell in love in a 2000 Toyota Sienna. I moved to Coronado in a 2000 Honda Accord, then finished my Navy stint in a 2011 Honda Fit, started married life in Wisconsin in a 2011 Honda Insight, graduated Lawrence with a 1995 Lexus LS400, had a short, expensive fling with a 1995 Volvo 850 Turbo while considering grad school, and am now growing old and semi-responsible during Home Depot runs with a 2010 Acura MDX. How does one remember life without these machines?
Hopefully, the next segment gets a 2002 BMW Z3M mnemonic.