The car was purchased new from Century Ford in Rockville, waaaaay back in the March of 1982. It was my dad's second car, replacing a 1967 VW Beetle that had finally rusted out to the point where he had no choice but to replace it after 205K miles. Don't ask me why he chose to buy an Escort. I don't know.
Only a short time after the car was purchased, we took a family trip to Luray Caverns in Virginia. On the way home, my mom was driving and hit a small black bear with the front passenger side fender. This was fixed only 8 years later.
I started driving the Escort when I was 16, in 1987. My parents only let me drive it twice a week at first, but told me if I got a job, I could have it. I got a job a few months later and the car was "mine." The car had 108K miles on it when I started driving it.
The Escort was a unique car and gained a lot of character during the years I drove it on a regular basis. Some of its greatest stories involve the four trips to Toronto during 1991 (twice to visit my dad, once to take my friend Michelle there for a graduation present, and once to take my brother there for the same reason), the infamous trip to Montreal in January 1992 (through one of the worst snowstorms the east coast had seen in many years), and another trip to Montreal in July of 1992, where my friend Dave's friends took bets on whether or not the car would make it back from our side trip to Toronto! The car went through snow, heat, rain, and insults like nothing else.
The one thing the Escort could not deal with was Justin, who was my friend first, my long-time boyfriend second, and I won't mention what he is to me now. Justin hated the Escort, and the feeling was mutual. It took me a little while to realize this, but when lights started to blow out whenever he got into the car, I made the connection. The car wouldl get smug with him during snowstorms, knowing full well that his Mustang could go nowhere (this was extremely evident during the blizzard of January '96). The car will listen to reason, however, as after a stern talking-to, it behaved admirably when he drove it to the airport for a business trip out of town.
The car was my daily driver for many years until Justin forced me to buy another car because he didn't trust the structural integrity of the blue car (for obvious reasons -- the shock towers were rusted out, which is a common problem on Escorts, and the brakes were all but shot too). I ended up with the gray car, which is the reason I will never buy a used car again. I drove the gray car for two years before finally throwing the keys across the family room in frustration after a trip to Baltimore where the car had done nothing but shudder and sputter the entire time. I never drove the gray car again. I drove the blue car -- with all of one brake -- to Damascus Chevrolet two days later and ordered the Camaro, and drove the blue car for the next two months until the Camaro arrived.
The Escort (and the blue car will always be the Escort, no matter how many other Escorts I ever own) is still with me, and is the only one of my three Escorts that still has tags on it. The gray car is for sale. The red car was my latest acquisition and was to be my roadracer in ITC until my car builders quit on me. :( I still drive the blue car several times a month (it has over 250,000 miles on it now), and it will always hold a place in my heart, sort of like the car in Dan Seals' "My Old Yellow Car."
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