As indicated previously, when I started to put this together, I had no idea how long it would take or the length of the post, because of the amount of content. Therefore, I decided to break into separate posts. This is Part #3 If you haven’t seen earlier posts on this topic, please click here to find them.
16-1978-Audi-5000
There was a lot of hype about this car and its introduction to the American market. I did a lot of research and decided it would be a very nice family car, so we bought one. It gave us a lot of good miles and handled well. We liked it a lot, but it developed a leek in the front-wheel-drive seals, so we traded it in on another one two years later. As you can see, being a German car, the styling didn’t really change that much.
17-1980-Audi-5000
This was a very nice family car, and gave us a lot of good miles. It was Silver, rather than Copper color, and had different shaped headlights, but other than that there was really nothing particularly special about it.
18-1982-Audi-4000
We liked the 5000 sedan so much, we bought a smaller version as a second car for me. Mine was bright red though. Our oldest daughters got to use it on the weekends.
19-1974-Chevy-El Camino
When we moved to Northern California, we bought an El Camino like this as a third car for hauling things and also for our two oldest daughters to use. The one we had was all white though.
When I decided to sell it and a guy at work came over to do a test drive. It was the first time I had been in the car for months. As soon as we started down the road, I heard something wrong in the engine. He heard it too. I said, “Well, I guess this car is not for sale after all, sounds like a rod is starting to knock. It turns out my daughters never checked the oil. I have to blame myself, however, I assumed they would check it.
I bought a low mileage V-6 engine from a local junk yard and installed it. After doing the engine swap, I hated to sell it since it ran so well, but we no longer needed the extra car.
20-1984-Buick-T-Type
I was feeling kind of guilty because we were not buying American cars. Buick had great ads about the T-Type Century model, with special suspension, lots of power, etc. The one we bought was a dark charcoal color. It was a very nice car when it was new, but didn’t hold up very well. It was actually depreciating at a faster rate than we were paying down the loan. After relocating to Pleasanton, I recall how it would bounce along the highway during my daily commute to Silicon Valley.
I ended up trading it in on a new BMW. Because its resale value was dropping so fast, I had to come up with extra cash to pay-off the car loan on it. (At that point, I felt we would probably never buy another American car.) I also traded in the Audi 4000. I discovered later that one of the employees at BMW of Pleasanton ended up buying the Audi. I would see it around town from time to time.
Click Here For Part 5
Tags: Cars
I learned how to drive a stick shift on the Audi 4000 (a.k.a. “Bruce”). Caused many a traffic jam in that car. Wasn’t that also the car that I crashed? Poor Bruce. I remember that Michelle and I HATED the El Camino. It always stalled in the middle of the road when it was cold and wouldn’t restart. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much…at least I had a car to drive to school.
You crashed Bruce? I didn’t know that
Yes, the El Camino would stall in the middle of… what was that? San Marin Drive? When we tried to turn left to go to school. Lori and I would be screaming… lol. Good times.
Lori almost crashed Bruce, but didn’t. One day she parked Bruce in front of the house without using the parking brake or curbing the front right wheel. Bruce rolled down the hill backward and stopped at the edge of a vacant lot. If Bruce had gone another foot or so, he would have gone down the hill into a house below. That’s what you call a close call.