My first car was a total lemon, but it was still my favorite car ever. Here’s the story:

I wanted to buy some late 1960s model Ford – I think it was a Fairlane. Anyway, my dad and I went to look at it and drive it around. I couldn’t take the car for a test drive, though, because I didn’t know how to drive stick yet. My dad drove it and said it probably wasn’t the best car for me. One of the reasons may have been the high price and the hole in the floor of the backseat.

I was pretty upset, and I wanted to buy it anyway. But the next day, my dad came home from work and told me he had found the car for me – and he was right. We went and looked at a 1984 Toyota Van (that was the model name – “The Van”). Again, I couldn’t test drive it – it was a five-speed manual transmission. But I knew I loved the car as soon as I opened the door:

• The seats folded down into a bed
• There were places for curtains on all the back windows
• There was a built-in mini-fridge between the driver’s and passenger’s seat
• It looked like both the Mystery Machine from “Scooby Doo” and a toaster

I was in love. I named it the Archduke Ferdivan. It couldn’t go faster than 55 miles an hour, because the shaking became unbearable at that speed. You had to flip up the driver’s seat to get to the engine, but the battery was was underneath one of the back seats. It had the winter weather traction of a ski, and slid around the road and into ditches every time it snowed. It was awesome.

My dad actually drove it more often than I did – he filled the back with tools while we built a new house. But I learned to drive stick and drove everywhere I could. Until one day, about two years after I bought it, on my way home it started to rattle more loudly than usual. That night, it didn’t start. The next day, it took an hour to jump start it enough to drive it into town. It never started again. I traded it in to the dealer for $500 back off a new lemon (a Chevy Lumina that needed to go to the mechanic about once a month, but that's another story).

I can no longer drive the Archduke, but I still love it.