#here you go fuckmobile 9000

[sukimas]

i don't think i've ever posted about my car (the fuckmobile 9000) here, but it's the car of all time, so you get to be subjected to my experiences with vehicles.

so, for context: i own a car from 1996 (because I don't make any money). however- and this is important- i do not own a beater car. i own a car that was, at the time, a fairly high-end vehicle.

the car i have, specifically, is a top of the line '96 nissan maxima. bought early in the january of that year. the color as stated in the owner's manual is "gold" but the department of motor vehicles has ruled it as "beige". the paint on the roof is peeling off; the cover for a small piece of one of the headlights has gone missing somewhere. the hubcaps are beginning to rust, and the paint on the windshield wiper holders has been rubbed clean away, making them clean steel that reflects the sun directly into my eyes whenever i'm driving home at sunset.

the first indication one might gain that this car was worth far more than three thousand bucks back in the day is when, before starting it up, one opens the gas tank. on the internal cover, there is a warning saying to only use premium fuel (93 octane or better) for necessary engine performance.

(it gets 87 octane because that is what i can afford and it likes it. however, as protest, the gas tank refuses to indicate the proper fuel level until i hit half empty. such is life.)

despite the car insurance being 24 dollars a month, once you actually start the vehicle it roars to life as if it's fresh off the lot. completely overkill for a consumer vehicle, it's outfitted with a v6 engine that makes the thing shake so much that it needs a special doohickey called a harmonic balancer on the crankshaft to make it stop doing that.

i discovered, incidentally, that it requires a harmonic balancer when the rubber on the original manufacturer one wore out and the car threw 6 belts before the mechanics figured out what the hell the problem was. essentially all the rubber and plastic on the vehicle has worn out from age. this is, in fact, the only engine problem i have ever had.

one interesting piece of plastic in many vehicles is a little bolt-shaped thing that indicates when the brake light should turn off; a brake light is actually a dead man's switch, in that the switch is always on when it is not receiving electronic signal, as opposed to always off. anyway, the brake light's plastic bit broke in half last summer and my car battery died repeatedly until i figured out i needed a replacement for it, which cost $3 plus $18 shipping from missouri. the dashboard odometer mechanism is also plastic-based, so it is a 1/3 chance that it increments on any trip (but the internal odometer works; strangely, despite this discrepancy, there's only a 3,000 mile mileage difference between them.)

the radio/media system fuse burnt out in 2019; interestingly, unlike in more recent cars, this is not connected to the clock, so I can still tell the time. i do miss my cassette player, though, even if i mortifyingly found out recently that half of my old cassettes are from joe biden's favorite band.

either way, you're not here to hear about my car trouble (summing in total to just under half of the vehicle's current retail price). you're here to hear about its performance. well, i'm happy to tell you that even with 87 octane, it gladly goes from zero to sixty in about 6.7 seconds, nearly the same timespan as the 2022 maxima (5.7). how do i know this? i live in a town where the lovely non-permanent residents significantly enjoy showing off the power of their cars' motors. it's similarly excellent at maintaining high speeds, keeping 80 even running up steep grades in the appalachian mountains.

now, as for miles per gallon, it's not great. it's a car from 1996, and i'm feeding it low-octane fuel so it's doing even worse than it should be, but it can still run from the WV/SWVA border to DC on 2/3 of a tank. (it takes 3/4 to get back, because of the uphill/downhill differences, but it's still easily manageable on one tank.)

now you're definitely saying "whoa, hold on man, think about the emissions on that thing!"

luckily, my car's registered back in fucking lockheed martinville, so it's gotta go through emissions checks every two years. it's passed every single one with flying colors- by better margins than my next door neighbor's brand new audi. fuck that guy for doing donuts outside at three in the morning, by the way. of course, CO2 is an issue, but electric cars cost forty grand and as previously mentioned i live in appalachia. so this guy's staying around until it turns 30 or i leave the united states, whichever comes first.

in conclusion: the fuckmobile 9000 will never die. also don't tailgate me for your own safety, this thing's got a steel body and you've got crumple zones. if you rear end me at a traffic light, you're the one who's getting totaled, not me.

(as for me you can rest assured i'm not rear-ending you, i don't want a door through the head)

anyway if you have no money and want an alternative vehicle before getting enough to go electric, consider an ancient and immortal creature from the 1990s. and maybe try downloading some mp3s on your phone to listen to on trips; you never know when your radio will spontaneously fail, after all.