Medium pimpin'

Remember the movie Face/Off, from the late 1990's? There is one scene early in the film in which Nicholas Cage arrives at the airport before the big John Woo shoot-out. He pulls up in a black 1996 or 1997 Cadillac Seville and looks all bad-ass getting out of the car in slow motion with bad-ass music playing in the background. I have always loved that car.

I've been casually checking out Craigslist for used cars the last few weeks. I drive a lot for work, and really need to stop putting the miles on my Honda Ridgeline, which is a lease. I have been thinking of grabbing a Toyota or Honda, and from what I've seen my options are limited in my budget (around $2000). Everything is super-high miles, rotted, not inspectable for that price.

Yesterday I found the Seville. They wanted only $850 for it. It's been in storage for the last year and the check engine light is on, but the body is in pristine condition and it has under 100K miles on it. It's not the same color as the bad-ass Face/Off ride, but it's still the same ride.

The car runs but not great. The check engine light is on, and it sputters a bit when you first hit the gas from a standstill (and it really doesn't like the steep hill by my house). It definitely needs a tune-up and an oil change, and we need to do something about the check engine light. So even if I spend another $1000 I'm still in my price range, the miles are low for a 13-year-old car, and once again the body looks like new.

Because of my busy schedule, however, I did something stupid. Really fucking stupid and intentional. I can't get temporary plates until sometime this week, and can't get back to the seller before next weekend. So I pulled one of the plates off my Honda and mapped out the best back-roads-only route to get home. 1 mile from the seller's house, a cop sees my out-of-date inspection sticker and pulls me over. I didn't bullshit the guy - I know police officers are bullshitted probably more than anyone else in any career - so I told him the truth and admitted I knew that it wasn't incredibly smart to toss the wrong plates on an unregistered vehicle. Despite my honesty, I drove back home with a summons for $176 for misuse of plates. I'd fight it but I don't have a leg to stand on. At least he didn't impound the car, and a tow probably would have also cost that much.