Cars

The Haines family has had quite a few cars since our marriage began on June 30, 2001. I must say that I am a little obsessed with cars. I have been ever since I can remember. I was a child that was very easy to please. Every time my mom took us to the store I was very happy with the $1 matchbox car. I think I had every matchbox car ever made. I kept them all in pristine condition and to this day do the same thing with my real cars! It is actually pretty funny because my son has started to do the same thing!

Here goes the story of me and real cars…please hang on for the ride!

1981 Pontiac Bonneville

This was my very first car. I can’t remember what year my parents bought this car but it was somewhere around 1982 or 1983. This was actually our family car for quite a while. My car was light blue and was not the fancy model that is shown in the above picture (nor did it include the 80s chick in the picture!). I got this car from my dad when I was 16 years old and drove it all throughout high school. My fondest memories of the car are:

• The giant bench seat that had a huge lever that moved it back in forth
• To figure out what the speedometer read you had to multiple your speed by 1.3333
• When it was really cold out I had to use a screwdriver to manually open the choke on the carburetor.
• My wife Michelle (girlfriend at the time) hated this car with a passion and told me this every time she got into the car. Lets just say this car made an appearance at our prom once…

1990 Chevrolet Lumina APV

Yes I did drive a minivan. To put this in more perspective my parents actually owned 3 of these vans at one time! It looked like a dustbuster convention in our driveway with them all parked together! The van I drove was white with burgundy interior. You can imagine what Michelle thought of my image going from the 1981 Bonneville to this beauty! I actually really liked this van. It drove great and was awesome to use to haul all of our crap back and forth from college for a few years. I was very thankful to at least have a vehicle at college and a lot of people in know didn’t.

1987 Mecury Sable GS

So in my second year of college my grandparents gave me their car. I was so excited about this car. It had under 30,000 miles on it when I got it and was in amazing shape. My grandma couldn’t drive anymore so they sold me this car. Mine was light blue and Michelle was much happier with this car than my previous ones! The worse thing about it was that it was a Ford and I hated Fords (still do!). This car was great except that every week it seemed to have a new issue! For instance when it was raining outside you would stop at a traffic light and the car would just shut off. Sometimes it would start right back up and sometimes you had to wait a minute. The death of this car came when one day I pulled out from an intersection and when the car shifted out of first gear the transmission failed. I was left stranded on the side of the road.

1991 Honda Accord LX

Sorry for the picture but this is the only one I could find of this car. This was my first ever Honda and one of my favorites. My dad bought me this car when I was home for Christmas break one year in college. It was a 5-speed and I had never driven a 5-speed before. Needless to say it was very fun to learn and after only having it for a few days having to drive back to school by myself! It was a good way to learn though. I had this car for several years and even hauled a 10 foot piece of countertop at one time with both myself and my dad in the car! As you can see in the picture this car was awesome in the snow. It never left me stranded anywhere. This is the only car that I have owned that I actually had to buy new tires for! Normally I don’t keep a car long enough to buy new tires.

1990 Honda Accord LX

As a wedding gift my parents gave us this car. Michelle was still in school when we got married so it was essential that we had another car. Again we had a light blue car. I guess we have a thing for blue cars. This car had about 130000 miles on it when we got it but it still ran great. I still think this model of Accord looks good even with all of the new modern cars. We ended up selling this car not long after we go it to someone in Richmond, VA.

2002 Honda Civic EX

Again this is the only picture I could find of this car! This was our first even new car and my wife’s favorite car. This car was really good looking and we loved the color of it. We drove it until we found out we were having our first child. The baby car seat did not fit in the back seat very well and with all of the crap you have to carry around with a baby we decided we better get something bigger. After a few attempts at selling the car my sister ended up buying it from us. She named the car Ruby and you can see what she did to the car below:

Ruby is now dead…RIP.

2004 Honda CR-V EX

After we sold our Civic to my sister we purchased our first SUV. Michelle refuses to drive a minivan so we ended up with the CR-V. This was one of my favorite cars we owned. It was a ton of fun to drive and was the perfect size for our small family. We hauled all kinds of stuff in this car including all of the rocks for our flower bed that you can sort of see in the picture. We drove the CR-V for about two year and after our second child came along we decided we needed something bigger. The CR-V was great but with two kids and a dog it was going to be too small to travel in (we travel a lot).

2005 Honda Accord EX

This was my first ever brand new car. I bought this car right after I got a raise at work. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do but what can I say. I looked all over Virginia for this exact model. It had a 5-speed manual transmission and Honda didn’t make many of these that was the EX model. This car was a blast to drive and got awesome gas mileage. The transmission was silky smooth and it was fun to tear up on the back roads on the way to work. It was much better than sitting in traffic! I drove this car for about a year and half and for some odd reason thought I needed yet another car so I traded it in…

2005 Acura TSX

Here lies my favorite car I have owned. Minus the fact that this car was an automatic (Michelle would not allow me to buy another manual transmission car) it was near perfect in all aspects. It had loads of power would drive through a corner at speeds that I won’t mention here. Apparently I was not meant to have this car because it was rear ended twice. The first time was a minor fender bender on the way to work. It was actually pretty funny because the guy was driving on a suspended license and fled the scene leading to the cops chasing after him. The second time I was driving to a gig and a hubcap from a car in front of me flew off and all of the traffic came to halt on I-66 except for the car behind me. He hit me going about 50mph. You can see what happened here:

Several months later and after $10,000 work was done to my car I finally got it back. I drove my car home and parked it in the driveway. I was so happy to drive it again. A few days before I got the car back we had a snowstorm. It was nothing major but it was enough to put a coating of snow on the roof of our townhouse. After the snow it turned bitterly cold freezing all of the snow that was remaining. Michelle was teaching violin lessons and I was up in our bedroom watching TV. All of the sudden we heard a huge crash. We went running around our house trying to figure out what it was. Finally I looked outside and was shocked at what I saw. The roof of my car that I had just got back was smashed in! You see a giant piece of ice from the copper roof on our townhouse fell directly on my car. This piece of ice was about 5×14 feet. Now once again I had to take my car back to the body shop for another several week repair job. Lets just say this car was cursed from the day I got it! As of a April 2008 this car is no more. I traded it in on a 2005 Honda Civic. My Acura is probably at the smasher right now since it can’t ever be sold again…at least in the US!

2006 Honda Pilot EX-L

Here is our current family car. We sold the 2004 CR-V and purchased this car right before we adopted our baby girl Mya. I really wanted to get the new Honda Odyssey van but Michelle wanted no parts of it. So since we are a Honda family (in case you haven’t figured that out yet) this was our only reaming choice. We spent about a month going back and forth on this purchase. We went to Carmax and drove about every SUV in existance and couldn’t find anything we liked better. Once we decided that the Pilot was going to fit our needs we went to the dealer and asked a really random question. We wanted to drive a new Pilot to our house and see if it would fit in our garage! So the dealer agreed and we drove it home for the big test. As you can probably tell it did fit in the garage. It was such a tight fit that we had to get a parking mat for the front tire so we could park it in the exact same spot each time.

In my opinion this is the best built Honda that we have owned. It is very ergonomic inside and the kids love the DVD player in the back. We are waiting for the day that the kids will actually start wearing the wireless headphones so we can listen to XM radio in the front! We love traveling in the Pilot and basically could not function without it at this point in our lives. We plan on driving this one for several more years as it is actually paid for. The only bad thing right now is that is cost over $60 to put gas in it!

2005 Honda Civic EX

Here is my current car that I drive back and forth to work. I have had this car for about a month now and it actually isn’t too bad. Since the lease was up on my Acura and the price of gas has skyrocketed (my Acura took premium gas!) we decided that we needed something more economical. As you can figure Michelle is very happy to have a Civic again. Since Ruby died such a horrible death we hope this car will have a much better life. It had 27,000 miles on it when I purchased it and I plan on driving this one for a good while. On the first two tanks of gas I have averaged 33mpg which is a huge savings for us! My big annoyances with this car is no XM radio and the fact that it goes 0-60 in what seems like a lifetime!

So there you have it friends. This is our story of cars. I hope that we don’t open a new chapter for at least 4-5 more years. Although if you know me very well I have said that every time we buy a car! I think with Marcus starting preschool and us having a giant mortgage payment now I am pretty set with our cars for now however check back in a few months to be sure!