Whether cars are very good or very bad, it’s fact that there’s a need for the critters and how you treat them closely correlates to how they treat you.

This wasn’t the case with my first auto, however, because that 1954 Ford was on its last legs when I procured it for a price of $50. There were some less-than-desirable traits from the get-go, but it was mine and I drove it with pride. I quickly learned that dirt roads were not a good thing. That should have been obvious from the start because the rusted-out floorboards were lined with plywood, but I was a high school kid who, like many peers, thought I knew much more than I did.

The car was gray upon its arrival, but my friend Scott and I soon put that to rest. I thought a two-tone Kelly green and black body would be ideal, but when it came time to paint that beauty the local hardware was out of Kelly green paint. But we refused to be deterred. We sidetracked a potential problem by painting the car black and chocolate brown. And, experienced as we were, we couldn’t get all the paintbrush tracks out of the final product. Which, in reality, wasn’t the final product at all because, though rookies in most things, we had eyes and knew my trusty steed rated extremely low on any aesthetic scale.

And so, with the help of a spray gun, green and black it became.

I’ve probably had two new cars in my life: an older version Saab and a Volkswagen Rabbit.

The former, although it did survive a trip to Mexico with me and Paul, died early because of lousy maintenance by its owner.

Now the Rabbit presents a different story. It was spunky to drive, bright red, and didn’t last long.

I lived and worked in north central Oregon at the time, and a friend of a friend came from maybe Cincinnati to work in the wheat harvest. Unfortunately for him, he brought his girlfriend along and she soon became enamored by other farm workers in that small community. Plural.

At wits’ end one morning, he called me at work and asked if he could borrow my new Rabbit.

Sure.

Hardly an hour after grabbing the keys he called again saying he had survived the crash. Which was more than could be said for the Rabbit.

He hadn’t left the city limits of a town the size of Wallowa, yet had totaled my car. How was he to know there was a stop sign where the street he was on crossed the main highway? Good news was the Rabbit was manufactured with a seat belt system attached to the door that meant you immediately were strapped in when you closed the door. They might have been proven deadly and banned in future cars, but that seat belt definitely saved his life.

For a while I drove cars for Hertz, taking an assortment of vehicles to and from Spokane International Airport. I developed favorites and not-close-to-being favorites, and today am driving, although not new, my all-time favorite. A wise CPA friend of mine taught me that buying a new car is less than a brilliant thing to do. And he’s right, I think. Compare the price of most new cars when you buy them with the value of the same car two minutes after driving it off the lot and you get my meaning.

I’m no more mechanic than I’ve ever been, but I have learned that scheduled oil changes make economic sense.

Jabberwock II columnist Rocky Wilson is a reporter for the Chieftain.