RouseWorld | Wayward Packet -- New Car!

New Car!

A Stupendous Anachronism
Or
Rouse Gets a 'New' Vehicle
(new to me, anyway)

For most of my life, except for a brief stint in a V8 Plymouth Satellite station wagon as a teenager, I've driven kind of un-macho vehicles.

I went to college in a random little sedan (does anyone even remember that one?) and went from it to an old orange VW Bug — certainly not a fire breather, but a fun little car. When the Bug left me by the side of the road for the last time (at 3 in the morning, thanks for picking me up Jason!), Dad offered his 1987 pre-Tacoma Toyota pickup. The 1987 model is not the big-ass things that trucks have tended towards today, but instead a modest, low-sitting vehicle with a V4 engine.

While these Toyota's have an excellent reputation for reliability, this one had a hard life before I got it (used for a lot of start and stop delivery driving) and leaked just about everything that could leak — including transmission fluid. So after a few years I had gotten a little concerned about reliability and was looking at needing to have the engine taken apart to replace the seals and having the source of the transmission leak found if I were going to continue to use it as a daily driver.

I could do that, or get a new daily driver vehicle — but who really enjoys playing used car roulette?

As luck would have it, the company I work for was getting rid of a Ford Bronco they had purchased for our outdoors and hunting editor, who had since retired. I put my name in the hat to have a chance to purchase it for a really good price — and won the drawing!

Hop in OJ!

Okay, this isn't the exact model OJ used — he was in a 1993 — this is the 1996 full-sized Bronco, the last year Ford made this brand. It is also just about the nicest Bronco they made — I got a pretty sweet deal. They even threw in a set of new tires.

This thing is huge! It isn't as long as the Toyota, but it is probably the widest thing I've ever owned, and certainly the tallest passenger vehicle I've owned (not counting the National Guard's 915).

The Bronco has a 5.8L V8 engine (similar to what they were putting in the Mustang, but geared for torque instead of absolute speed), 4 wheel drive (with high strength manual locking hubs) and the usual gang of suspects like power windows and mirrors, window tint, cruise control, compass/temperature display in the rear mirror and all kinds of other stuff. It even has an after-market Sony CD changer, located right next to the driver (in a storage compartment between the driver and passenger). So far though, I've mostly used by iPod, connected through a cassette tape adaptor.

The vehicle is in good condition as well, the only thing really wrong with it is that the cruise control is a bit finicky and sometimes won't work the first few times you try to set it. Otherwise everything works, which is a very strange thing for me.

I'm used to cars with broken or missing AC and radios.

Okay, so the Bronco is a bit of an anachronism in these days of hybrid cars and fake off-road SUVs. Certainly fuel efficiency might be a bit of a problem, but right now I'm enjoying the Bronco way too much to worry. I'll probably do a bit more driving on the weekends, just because I know I have a reliable vehicle, but during the week it will be the same old back and forth to work.

Of course I will have to go off-road at least once, the Bronco deserves it.