My

Oh Calibra, my dear Calibra how I will mis you. You were my first car. The only car for me. All other cars paled in comparison to you. Your sleek gray-black natural looks, blinded windows and those ’91 curves with humble 15″ wheels. That huge black sun band which always made it virtually impossible to drive up to the line at stop signs, those black headlight trims that made it almost impossible to see the road at night. Those were the times.

Do you remember when I picked you up? Our first real drive (I’m not counting that 5 minute test drive with Tony) together and your cooling fluid was gone before we even arrived home! Great stuff you pulled there but I must admit that I wasn’t entirely happy with it at that time! I can also clearly remember how you started to remind me of your constant thirst for oil a few weeks later by flashing your little orange oil-level check telltale light. I must apologize though for having them disable that but it was just too annoying having to drive around like that. I was well aware of your oil needs at that point and from then on I’ve checked your level every week. Only once was I almost too late.

One of the most frightening things happened when we drove to Stork in Eindhoven on a dreary morning. It was raining and somewhere on the Eindhoven ring near the Kennedylaan (in a traffic jam) suddenly heavy smoke came from below the bonnet. Driving on with my fingers crossed (figuratively of course) I arrived at Stork and as suspected by then I found your cooling fluid gone. I was fortunate that your thermostat was broken at that time and on the way back I bought some new fluid to refill you. Turned out there was a small leak somewhere in the plumbing around the radiator and easy to fix. Sure looked spectacular though.

I also remember the starting troubles we had in the beginning. I was afraid your starter engine would give in but later found out I didn’t drive you enough! When we started to drive long distances you suddenly started to come to live. Since I started driving you each weekend for at least two hundred, sometimes more than a thousand kilometers your mood gradually became better. The only thing I needed to do was to give you a fresh bottle of oil every eight hundred kilometers or so and everything was well.

In the end though you started to show some signs of age but I only loved you more because of it. There were the standard rusty spots on your rear plating and at the welding seams near the center bottom of the car but you already had those when I bought you and it wasn’t that bad when you consider that I had you parked outside for three years. At one point your standard parcel shelf started to succumb to the weight of two speakers and I can still clearly remember how annoyed I was when it completely gave in on our way back from Germany. Luckily I was able to get a less flimsy one from the car audio shop and that worked out great. Should work out perfectly for my new car too.

About a half year later, also on the way back from Germany the roof lining started to come loose along the hatch. I should have known better than driving 180km/h with all the windows open. This creates an enormous amount of turbulence at the rear of the car which will eventually rip the lining. Of course I neglected to properly fix it too. So what begin as something relatively easy to fix suddenly became a huge problem when almost half of the roof came down on the autobahn a few weeks later. Thank God for duct tape. However we also found out that duct tape on a not so clean surface will not last very long when you park your car in the hot sun. Then I tried to glue it back to the roof again but this failed miserably and I finally gave in. I seriously thought about ripping the lining clean off at some point but in the end decided to stick with the duct tape and fix ritual. It was annoying as hell but I still loved you.

My dear Cali, I will never forget you.