I have often had love affairs with my vehicles. I name them, give them personalities, genders and have (yes, I hate to admit it) even written poetry about them. But of all the vehicles I have owned, my grandest love affair has been with my current vehicle, a 1996 Champagne colored Cadillac SLS. The last thing I was looking for when this car entered my life was some large luxury vehicle, especially a Caddy. I never really had a thing for them and often remember the models with the pushed up trunk, which to me was a horrid style. I think some of them even had a large buckle around the trunk to indicate an old-fashioned look. Those models were just downright wrong.
I accidentally ran into the Cadillac (no pun intended). I was driving a 1996 White Ford F150 with a shell and that relationship was turning ugly and needed to end with too many issues with that vehicle to count. We were looking for something to replace the truck with and in the same price range as what we felt we could sell the truck for. My friend had a neighbor, a sweet old man, who fell down his stairs and broke his hip and laid there for two days until my friend became concerned. She said it had been to quite at his place for the last couple days, so we called the police who broke down the door and found him. He was so happy with her and how concerned she was about him, he handed the pink slip over to her for the Cadillac and told her it was hers. Sadly, he knew he was dying from the complications of the fall. She had recently bought a new Jeep Cherokee and the Cadillac was too large of a car for her to drive, being a small person. So knowing I was looking, she called me.
Well I was skeptical at first. I was looking at cute used BMW’s and similar cars, not a large luxury car.
My husband was excited as he was a Cadillac fan and had owned a 1974 before. We took it for a test drive, with my husband driving first. The first thing I noticed was that it felt like I was riding on a cloud. I really do mean a cloud, it was so soft and smooth. Then I drove it. Wow, that did it for me. Such response, such smooth sailing, the car practically drove itself. It had excellent interior and exterior and very low miles since the sweet old man hardly ever drove it. And the best part was the fact that my friend said she would sell it to me for whatever I sold my truck for. Deal sealed!
Since then I have never regretted my decision. Well, almost never anyway. In the five years I have owned this car, my husband has had to do almost nothing to fix this car except regular maintenance, but one of the wonderful things about the car also turned out to be its nemesis. The NorthStar 32 value 8 cylinder engine got surprising good mileage averaging between 20-25 mpg. That is great for a large car, but the engine had a major defect, the head gasket. Here is where my love of my car was tested. When the head gasket blew (as it seems do in 75-80% of these engines) we were faced with a mind blowing 3000-4000K repair bill to have the work done. But what was I to do? We had bonded, this car and I. We were both middle aged women who still looked pretty good, we had reached a certain level of sophistication together and I was heartbroken at the thought of us going our separate ways. Her, to the junkyard, me to some lesser type car. Yes, my vanity had expanded quite a bit since driving my Cadillac, but no one could deny how classy she was and that it was rubbing off on me, I liked to believe. Giving my husband and father-in-law credit, they did look around at other vehicles but in the end couldn’t find one as good as her once she was fixed.
Between the comfort, the low repairs (except for the doozy of the head gasket), the still low miles, the excellent performance, the low gas mileage for the size of the car, it was no contest. She won hands down. It took a month of painful progress to get her fixed and when she was done, I hugged her right there in the mechanics parking lot in full view of the employees, not caring about the PDA I was exhibiting with my car. I really can’t imagine driving anything else besides a Cadillac now. She has spoiled me for all others.