Anyone who claims to be my friend knows that I have an incredibly strong connection to my car. It's probably obvious to complete strangers too, now that I think about it. But I want to clarify a few things about my obsession with my vehicle.
I am not just a stereotypical guy who loves his car.
Yes, I love my car.
Yes, I love driving it.
Yes, I love working on it.
Yes, I love showing it off.
Yes, I love the stares I get while driving it.
Yes, I take better care of it than my own body.
But I have good reasons for all of these things.
No, really, I do.
My car is not just a car. It is a project. It is a legacy. It has meaning.
It all goes back to when my dad was about my age. He loved Datsuns. He loved Zs. He used to tell me about when he was a kid, and how he would go to the Datsun dealership and just sit in the new Zs on the showroom floor. He even convinced one of his teachers at school to buy a Z before he had ever driven one. I don't know exactly how many Zs my dad has owned in his liftime, but the number is probably higher than you might guess. He could tell you just about anything you would ever need to know about a Datsun 240z or a 280zx Turbo. He could take one apart and put it all back together in a matter of days.
My point is, my dad is a Z guy.
My first car was a Datsun 280zx Turbo. It was a black and gold beast with T-Tops and gold honeycomb rims. It was a beauty. It was an automatic, so that's what I learned to drive in. I got my license from the DMV in that car.
About two years later, I started to imagine myself driving the beautiful orange 240z that had been parked in our driveway for some time. I wondered what it would be like to rev the engine, what it would be like to dirve a stick shift, and how cool it would be to dirve a car with an interior that felt like the cockpit of a fighter jet. I never asked my dad if I could drive it because I always felt like it was his toy car; not something for a rookie like me to be playing around with.
Not long after my days of dreaming of driving stick had started, my dad started to teach me. I practiced with him, I practiced with my mom, and I started to get the hang of it.
One day, I was running late for school. I ran out to my car and realized I probably had enough gas to make it to a gas station and nowhere else. I called my mom and asked what I should do. She was at work, Dad was at work, and the only other car at the house was the orange 240z.
That was the day that I fell in love. I went inside to grab the keys, and I got goosebumps. Just holding the key to such an amazing machine was enough to get my adrenaline flowing. I drove to school that day in the orange 240, and never looked back. I somehow managed to continue driving it, more and more often, until it became a daily routine. After some time had passed, my dad started calling it "your car" when we talked about it. I'll never forget how awesome it felt when I heard him say that for the first time.
I also love my car because of the work my dad and I put into it. The two of us have done all sorts of work on it, from engine tweaking to body detailing. My dad taught me how to make my car look brand new every time I wash it. He showed me how to put speakers pretty much anywhere you want them. We installed a cruise control unit in it. We rebuilt the entire engine together. I have learned more than I can even try to explain about cars, and driving cars while working on my Z with my dad.
My car is the main feature in a lot of my best memories, too. I have gone on some amazing journeys with my car, and I know that they wouldn't have been half as good with any other car.
So if you think I'm obsessed with my car, you're right. I am. But at least now you have some kind of idea of why that is the case.
