Pimp my Ride OR Ian's Exteme Car Makeover

Ian has been home this past week. When he finally arrived, it was clear that his vehicle was on it's last legs. Our freebie from our friend Crazy Lenny's Used Car Lot (which is actually a field lot that he leases for storage of his various and sundry vehicles for his business), an 87 Ford Tempo, has served Ian well for the past year, but really, he needed a REAL car that he could depend on.

The backstory here is that Lenny bought the Tempo a couple of years ago for his son Alex who is the same age as Ian (and the car). Apparently, Alex got into some kind of disagreement with another young man who decided to make his point by pouring a gallon of green paint all over the dash board and front seats. So Alex decided the car was no longer driveable. When we go it, it had been sitting for a long time (six months? a year, maybe?) and was pretty sad. It ran, but needed a lot of TLC to get it really usable again after soaking up all of that Florida sun and rain. We were able to peel most of the paint away from the moving parts enough to be usable-- the passenger side window and one a/c vent had been completely sealed w/ paint.

I've got to give Ian credit for soldiering through this character-building experience and making do with the "Tempotron" for the past year. He really did make the best of it and decked it out with a lovely hood ornament, pajama flannel seat covers (dinosaurs and space shuttles), plastic snakes that hung from the sun visors and an eclectic collection of hats in the back window. And, after it suffered the indignity of being broken into and having the radio ripped out (OK, now really, WHO would want that radio????), he lived with a plastic and duct tape window on the passenger side. Note the finely crafted passenger window in the photo above left.

So it was obvious, it was time for the Tempo to GO.

This week, Alan and Ian located a 96 Subaru Legacy wagon with 132,000 miles on it for a decent price and bought it. It needed a bit of fine-tuning, but promises to be dependable transportation and Ian is very happy with it. So tomorrow he's heading back up to Savannah with it. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed until I hear he's made it home...