So I figured it might be fun to know what we're taking on this trip. I'm terrible with taking and uploading photos, so for now you'll have to deal with not seeing exactly what I'm talking about. If the rain holds off tomorrow I'll snap some shots to give a little visual elaboration to this post.
The car we'll be driving slash travelling slash living in is a 1994 Buick Roadmaster Estate wagon. It's everything you think of when you hear the name Buick; it's big, it's comfortable, its big, its quiet, its big, its quite boat-esque, and oh yeah, did I mention it's big? If I recall correctly, it's actually the largest vehicle made by GM, or at the very least it's the largest wagon they put out, and the last of the full-size family wagons to come from the domestic car market in the US (thanks a lot, SUVs!! *shakes fist*). In case I haven't stressed this enough, this is quite a large vehicle. When it's all packed up nice nice for the trip it'll be somewhere in the 21 or 22 feet range in length and roughly 6 feet wide. If that doesnt sound like much to you, go out and measure your own car. Unless you have a dually pickup or a limo as your regular vehicle, I'm pretty sure this car has you beat in both dimensions. Just sayin'. If the Titanic were a car and could only carry 9 people, it would be this car....on second thought maybe the Titanic isnt a good thing to compare it to. Lets think more along the lines of a battleship on wheels, and one that wasnt parked in Pearl Harbor.
So a little bit of technical info for anyone that this means anything to. The Buick has an LT1 350 (5.7Liter) V8. Most people know the LT1 as the Corvette engine of that era, but the fact is GM used that engine in a lot of cars. The tranny is a 4 speed automatic (3 speed with overdrive), and it is of course rear wheel drive. The loaded weight of the wagon is 4400lbs, but this accounts for 9 passengers (since I have the rear facing pop up bench in the waayyyy back) and 23 gallons of fuel (although the gas light comes on after 18 gallons). All this and it gets a very respectable (in my opinion) 19 mpg. It should actually get about 23 mpg or so on the trip since I've done a lot of tune-up work to it. I really cant complain about the mileage considering the car is close to 2 tons empty, is 19 years old and has 150,000 miles on it (I think it's about 154k now). Oh and did I mention the knobby truck tires I put on it? All this and she'll move pretty quick. Its not uncommon to catch yourself doing 80 on the highway without realizing it (as Miriam commented after taking it one day).
I had to find one with a leather interior, since it's a Buick afterall. Getting a luxury car without leather would be like staying at the Ritz without drinking all those tiny bottles of booze at the mini bar. Except that you regret drinking those nips when the bill comes and it takes till summer to realize that whoever came up with leather seats obviously never wore shorts or had any sweat glands apparently (*shakes fist again*). Sitting on a slab of ham right out of the frying pan would at least be a little more comforting since the ham would more than likely be juicy. Oh, and you could eat it should the thought of ass-ham not totally disgust you (in which case you may have some issues).
All in all its probably the best road trip car....ever! It's roomy, it's comfortable (with the exception of the ass-ham scenario above, although that should be augmented by A/C that is apparently drawn directly from the stratosphere), and it gets decent-enough mileage to not totally kill us. Oh and it has airbags to not totally kill us as well (not a selling feature for me in particular with this car, but nothing I can do to change the fact that it has airbags I guess). Add to all this a set of off-road lights, off road tires, a super awesome trailer hitch cargo rack to carry spare gas AND two more tires, some built in awnings, screens, and window shades and you have a pretty sweet off-road-ish camp-mo-bile. I've been told it's a Mad Max wagon and a Zombie-pocalyse wagon, both of which I take as high praise!
In the interest of not killing our readers, I'll leave off this "quick rundown" for now, but I'll post some more technical mumbo-jumbo about the car and the work that I (and Miriam) have done in a future post.
Till next time,
RhodeKill Rob
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