Junkyard Exploration

Back in the early 1990s, I had a summer job with the federal government that required me to travel around fixing computers at various locations. One of the perks of the job was that I was given use of a vehicle, a brand spanking new 1990 Ford Taurus. This was the first generation of the Taurus and at the time it was pretty exotic looking compared to my own car that that time - a 1979 Mercury Zephyr. It had a very space-age appearance with it's rounded, almost bubble-like contours. As I drove the Taurus around that summer, I was quite impressed with how smooth and quiet the car was. Definitely made tooling around that summer a very comfortable affair. Over the years the Taurus slowly lost its iconic bubble shape and morphed into looking like all the other cars on the road. Eventually, in March 2019, Ford built the last Taurus. This particular car was the fourth generation of the Taurus and had a 3-liter V6 engine. The interesting thing about this car was that it came ...

This (or at least what's left of it) is what I would call a time machine. This Ram hearkens back to a time when trucks were used for one purpose and one purpose only - to work.  When this truck hit the road back in 1982, it was pretty inconceivable to think that a truck would have such "frilly" things like leather seats, power windows or cost more than a well equipped Cadillac.  A truck like this always brings me back to my adolescence, a time when I go visit to the neighbors down some back road bouncing around on a bench seat as big as our back 40, listening to the local country station on a crackly AM radio,  It was a simpler time and to be frank a much more honest time, and trucks like these reflected that - what you see is what you got. This particular Ram was a basic Custom trim level that had (according to the history report) a 3.7 liter slat 6 engine and 2 wheel drive .  As basic as basic can be.  This truck was based o...

A 1998 Acura EL was the second new car that I have bought in my life, replacing a 1994 Acura Integra that was my first new car. My Integra was a really nice red coupe version with a manual transmission and it was great fun to scream up the highway on-ramps in it. I was very reluctant to part with it, but since buying it I managed to get married and my first child had just been born. Sadly a little 2 door sports car just wouldn't cut it as family transport. At that point, we still weren't resigned to the idea of buying a minivan (yet), but we did want something that would allow us to easily stow our little critter into his car seat in the back. We were still quite smitten with Acuras (and Hondas in general) so when we saw that Acura was introducing a new 4 door sub-compact car, we decided to give it a look. The 1998 Acura EL that we ended up buying was an emerald green sport trim level version that had the same 5-speed manual transmission and VTEC engine as my old I...