That’s him. Isn’t he a sexy beast? Well that’s not exactly my car but that’s pretty much what it looked like in its prime, I’m just not sure if I ever got to see my car in its prime, or if it ever even had a prime.

My 1992 Eagle Premier - affectionately named “ROBDAWG” - has been with me since high school. Driving it made me feel like I was riding in the lap of luxury… just nobody else knew it. I’ve only seen one other like it in the last six years, and it was in the classic movie Roadhouse starring the badass sex-monster known to the layman as Patrick Swayze.

The Eagle may have looked, smelled, and run like a piece of junk, but in my eyes it could do no wrong. Even when I left its lights on no less than 10 times during my senior year of high school, we were never more than a set of jumper cables away from pushing 50 (maybe 60 if we were going downhill) with the wind in our face - if the power windows would have actually worked, that is.

But as of this week, our seemingly endless love looks like it will go the way of Brad and Jen, Ben and Jen, and Ben and Jerry. The brakes went out on “the dawg” for like the 4^th time in the last two years, but this time was the last straw.

The mechanic told me I had a bunch of busted stuff on it and proceeded to name off broken parts that I didn’t even know existed outside of the Lunar Rover and Martha Stewart’s vibrator. So the mechanic is naming off all these terminal car diseases, then he gets to the end and says… “Oh yeah, and your windshield wipers are streaking.” Thanks, dude. My freaking windshield wipers are streaking. Enough is enough! Junk it!

Anyway, the parts & labor were going to cost more than I (aka my dad) paid for the whole beautiful vehicle, so the decision to let it go was an easy one to make, but a hard one to come to terms with. My eyes are filling with tears just thinking about letting him go.

I’ll never forget the time it broke down on the 4^th of July in the middle of the country 20 miles from my house, or the time it quit working my freshman year of college and had to be towed the entire 3-hour trip back home, or the time the brakes gave out, or the time the brakes gave out again, or the time the headlights didn’t work, or the time the radiator blew out in the middle of downtown Dayton, the time the muffler blew and it was so loud you couldn’t even talk to the guy next to you, or the time the A/C quit working on a 9-hour trip to Illinois or the time I ran over that hobo in Kentucky. Great times…

I’ll miss you, ROBDAWG. I’ll miss the way your turn-signal beeped annoyingly every ½ second, the way your gas gauge didn’t ever work properly, and the way you ate up tires faster than the Three Billy Goats Gruff. I’ll also miss your 5-city/8-highway gas mileage and the way you took your sweet-ass time heating the inside and defrosting the windshield.

So this is the end. I’ll remember all the great times we had, and all the times I didn’t score with chicks in the back seat, and all the hot dates I would have used you for if I ever would have gotten one. It’s been a good run, I love you and I’ll miss you. It’s a shame you are a guy or I would have tried to put the moves on you. God knows you sure tried put the moves on me big guy. Later.

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