Greg Michaels’ Loaner is a Little Slice of How it Was

I am grateful that the garage that’s doing the bodywork on my car gave me a loaner. It’s an older model Kia Spectra. I believe it’s a 2001. The car runs well and is most likely good on gas. And might I add, they are letting me use it for free.

What is most interesting about the car is how it makes me feel. It really brings me back to my days driving the Suzuki Swift and to some degree my old white Hyundai Accent. Neither of those cars like the one I’m driving now, has ABS. That’s the first thing I had to transition back to, not jamming on the brake at a sudden stop.

It smells a bit like cigarette smoke, which is okay because my Malibu is the same. This is even though I haven’t smoked in the Malibu in almost a year.

The radio is about like the two cars I mentioned above. The Kia even has a tape deck. I remember using my tape deck daily to listen to air-checks of the night’s radio show on the way home in the Hyundai.

Like the Swift, there is no air conditioning in the Kia but that’s not going to matter after today anyway.

The car just brings me back to a time when all that mattered was having ten bucks for gas and five or so dollars for the drive thru. That’s providing you could get the driver's side window down without it falling down the window slot.

So long as the radio reception came in and Bondo held you were "all good." Don't laugh too much, a little four cylinder can get 35 mpg and the 13 inch $30 tires, they weren't bad either.