By Lambe Lamis 
I want I nonetheless had my Aunt Helen’s 1968 Chevy Nova.
Aunt Helen was my great-aunt and I purchased the automobile from her within the early ’70s after my mom made her cease driving. It didn’t have air or a radio, but it surely had a 307 cubic-inch V-8, it was reliable and constructed like a tank.
I’m reminiscing about that automobile after every week during which my spouse and I handled a number of automobile issues involving our flivvers that value some huge cash in automobile leases and plenty of downtime as a result of each autos have been within the store present process repairs.
I suppose you may say the fundamental trigger for our present set of issues is the age and mileage of our autos which have served us effectively over 17 years. Each have in extra of 200,000 miles and are nearing the 20-year mark when they are going to be thought-about antiques. My truck has just a bit over two years remaining earlier than reaching that milestone.
They’re paid for and the price of changing them appears out of our attain. However then the restore payments to maintain them operating ain’t low-cost both.
It wasn’t all the time that manner.
Earlier than my hair started turning gray and I began preventing the battle of the bulge, I labored on our vehicles; I purchased the auto restore books, obtained the instruments and with the assistance of my father-in-law discovered to repair the issues.
I modified oil, did tune-ups, set the timing (this was all earlier than 1980 when the computer systems began to totally take over the vehicles), changed water pumps, starters, alternators; nearly every thing however the brakes and transmission. I by no means may get the dangle of fixing brakes and I knew transmissions have been out of my league. As Soiled Harry stated, “A person’s obtained to know his limitations.”
That each one ended when the vehicles began changing into too subtle and I developed carpal tunnel syndrome and “retired” from the “mechanic enterprise” to let another person deal with the repairs. To this point, we’ve been fortunate to search out good mechanics to work on our vehicles.
However our devoted stallions are reaching that age the place in some unspecified time in the future, they could need to be put to pasture. The issue is, I don’t know if I wish to put them down. One factor about renting autos is you get the possibility to ‘check drive” vehicles you may think about proudly owning and I haven’t discovered one I like. I’ve pushed in pickups and SUVs for thus lengthy I can now not get right into a automobile. The brand new vehicles sit so low now that for me to enter one requires me to contort my physique right into a close to painful place to get behind the wheel.
This brings me again to Aunt Helen’s Nova. It didn’t need to depend on a pc to function, every thing on the engine was accessible, it was simple to get out and in of and, as I stated, it was reliable.
They don’t make ’em like that anymore.
I want they nonetheless did.