Final Car Wash

Final Car Wash
An Eulogy for my Sundance
October 10, 1999

I often told friends I enjoyed washing my car, but it was always seen dirty, since I rarely washed it. My '89 Plymouth Sundance was black cherry, dark red, maroon or maybe some color that I cannot describe, because the color changed with the light. After every car wash, the hidden red color would shine through, making the car look new again. Last time I had it washed was in August. Two days ago it had its final car wash by courtesy of the Pasadena Fire Department.

I bought my Sundance seven years ago with the help of my uncle. He is a very cautious man. He has only purchased used American cars from the same dealer and the same salesman, who is his next door neighbor. When he took me car shopping we only stopped at a few dealers before we finally chose this car. I did not know much about cars. I had never even heard of the make Plymouth or the model Sundance when I bought the car. My only reason to buy the car was that I did not want to take the buses anymore, I did not want to bother my uncle a second time to shop for cars, and the mysterious color intrigued me.

I paid $4600 cash, including tax and first year of registration, for the car. The odometer reading was then 67,821, but I did not know that it was way too high for a three-year-old car.

My uncle drove the car back home for me because I had never driven a car alone before. The next day I was very excited about my car and decided to take a test drive myself. That summer I was living with my uncle's family in Palmdale, a suburb of L.A., where there was little freeway traffic. I headed towards Highway 14, and I was so scared that I almost hit the curb of the sharp on-ramp. After I got onto the freeway, I tried to accelerate to the speed of other cars. However, no matter how hard I stepped on the gas, all the other cars still passed me swiftly. My speedometer indicated that I was already driving 70 mph, 15 mph above the speed limit. I thought my speedometer must be malfunctioning. Later when I asked my aunt about the speedometer, she said that people usually drove at least 15 mph over the speed limit on the freeways and she believed that I would drive that way soon. I laughed at her idea and vowed that I would never break the speed limit.

A few weeks later I got my first (out of two) speeding ticket with my Sundance. I was driving on Interstate 5 downhill near Magic Mountain at night when I passed a highway patrol without noticing him. When he was issuing me a ticket, I was too scared to ask for mercy. I had to go to traffic school for that and I secretly enjoyed it. There were a lot of interesting people in the class, and I learned something new about traffic laws.

I fell in love with my Sundance. To me it was more unique than most cars on the road because I rarely saw another car like mine. Once, in a parking lot, I absentmindedly reached for the door of someone else's Sundance and was surprised that I couldn't open it. I wasn't used to seeing another car of the same kind parked in the same lot with mine.

When I first got my car, I washed it twice a week, using my uncle's garden hose. My uncle tried to tell me that it was not good to wash the car too often. I thought he was just concerned about the water bill. On a hot summer day afternoon, it was so much fun to play with water and make the car shine!

One Saturday morning in the summer of 1996, I went to pick up a friend to go to a cyber party. Before he got into my car, he pointed at it and said, "Look, there's a sun on your car!" "Yes, I just washed it yesterday. It always shines like this under the sun. Isn't it brilliant?" I was so proud of my car that I did not realize what he was talking about. Later that day I found some scratches on the hood. Someone had intentionally damaged my shining car! I was very upset. After closely examining the scratch, I realized the drawing was actually a dancing sun. Probably some neighboring kids were jealous of the brightness of my car and scratched it with a knife. But I was fortunate that they did not write any bad words. Since that time my car always carried the dancing sun—until it danced in flame.

I spent a lot of time driving and waiting inside my car. I put another 76941 miles on it. I always tried to take special notice every time the car turned another thousand miles. On November 16, 1995, it reached 100,000 miles. At the moment when all six digits were turning at once, I took pictures of the odometer, and later went out with a friend to celebrate the occasion. It would only happen once in a lifetime for my car. I was very excited about it.

I had a special attachment to my car, although a lot of people laughed at my affection because my Sundance was not a reliable Honda or Toyota. Indeed, during the seven years of my possession, my car visited the mechanic countless times and I spent thousands of dollars on the maintenance and repairs. Besides the scheduled maintenance, I had the radiator rebuilt twice, cylinder head replaced once, valve cover gasket replaced twice, and I got new tires and new A/C. When my car failed the smog check last summer, I was forced to consider selling the car. I did not want to abandon it and sell for a few hundred dollars, so I got a used engine instead. After the installation, the engine ran so smoothly that I could not feel any vibration when driving. It was almost like new!

My car had been towed four times, out of gas six times, and bumped three times. It hit a squirrel in Pasadena and killed a rabbit in Death Valley. The first time the car ran out of gas we were in the middle of a desert in the middle of the night where no light could be seen for miles. I had to hitch a ride with a big truck to the nearest city, 33 miles away, for a pay phone. Another time someone broke into my car and took away my new down jacket, a pair of used tennis shoes and some small change.

The most frustrating auto failure was the time when I drove from the Bay Area back to Los Angeles last spring, after breaking up with a boyfriend. On the usual 5-hour trip, my car stalled 28 times, and I had to spend a night in a scary motel in an unknown mine town, population 1,000, near Bakersfield. My car was probably the nicest looking car in that town that day. Their mechanic randomly replaced some filter and charged me a lot of money, and later refused to refund my money when my car stalled again a few minutes after I left his shop. Back in L.A., it only took my mechanic a few minutes to fix the problem.

During the last ten months, my car did not have any trouble. Thursday night while I was driving back from UCLA, I was pleased to read 144,762 on the odometer and felt proud of my car. I parked the car outside my office and went to work at 12:10. Little did I know that that was the last time I would park my car. An hour later, I got an email from my roommate Jen, "You should call security about your car. They say it caught on fire and the fire department had to be called." Was it a joke? I went to check.

Out in the darkness of yellow streetlights, next to two campus security officers, immersed in a stinky burning smell, lay my car, barely recognizable. The front hood was bent, opened and revealed the burnt skeleton of the engine. Loose parts were scattered everywhere. Water was all over the place. It looked as if someone had taken out the guts of the car and brutally tortured it. The scene was utterly horrible. "The fire was very big. Maybe there was some gas leak," said one security officer.

I was in shock, but mixed with strange excitement and despair. I never expected such a tragic ending for my car. I had thought about various ways I might say good-bye to it. I thought about selling it or donating it to charity when I got ready to buy another car. I had never imagined that my car would just decide to take its own life and burn to death. "Spontaneous combustion," commented my advisor, Dr. Yung, who thought it was rather funny.

Gone with the car were a new Thomas Guide 2000, nine decks of poker cards, and a box of my favorite music tapes. Fortunately, I took my bag with me into the building while the car caught on fire, and I hung my stuffed animal monkey on the coat hanger just an hour before the accident so all my valuables were not burned or soaked in water.

I will always remember my Sundance. We had been to many places together. We went as far north as Lake Tahoe, south to Tombstone, east to Chiracahua National Monument, west to the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, as high as the High Sierra, as low as the Death Valley Basin, and as fast as, well, some very fast cars. We were in snow, rain, sun, fog, and on roads that were icy, unpaved, steep or winding.

We had been through many things together. We went to various classes, interviews, dates, concerts, parties and weddings. We went sight-seeing, camping, skiing, diving and flying. We passed many cars on the winding, narrow 110, the oldest freeway in America. I loved to drive in the fast lane with the radio on, the windows down, and the traffic was light.

I will not be the only one who remembers my car. My Sundance had given many people special memories. There are those who came to the U.S. to study or visit for the first time, and whom I picked up from the airport and welcomed to the country. My car was the first car they rode in. There are those who practiced driving with my car, and those who took their driving tests using my car. There are those who regularly rode with me to go shopping, and those whom I helped move. There are those who took a ride with me to visit the mechanic. There are the tow truck drivers. There is also my mechanic, Mark, who has been very patient with my car and given me many valuable suggestions on auto maintenance. When I called him on Friday, he immediately recognized me and advised me where to tow my car. Maybe he was happy that my car had finally finished all its sufferings.

I should also be happy to see my car rest in pieces. It had lived a full life and died with pride. One of my greatest regrets was that I did not see the blaze that my Sundance displayed to the world at its final moment. Did the spirit escape and dance in the flame? Bursting into flame and reduced to scraps, it must have been spectacular and glorious.

I took many pictures of the remains of my car before the tow truck drivers took it away. Four o'clock in the afternoon of October 9, 1999, when my car vanished around the corner of my street was the last time I saw the dark, shining red.

I also regret that I missed the final car wash. Well, at least it was thorough and with big hoses.


Revision: 5/15/2000



rest in pieces


the tow truck drivers took it away


Four o'clock in the afternoon of October 9, 1999, when my car vanished around the corner of my street was the last time I saw the dark, shining red.