Car #2 - 1986 silver Dodge Omni
A new 1986 silver Dodge Omni was my second car and my very first manual transmission. My parents purchased this car because my sister and I basically forgot to ever get an oil change on the station wagon and all those reverse brake slams on icy covered parking lots was too much for its transmission. The Omni was new but in no way imaginable was it good. It was 100% piss-poor American made garbage that made a Le Car seem like a safe vehicle.
I did not have a strong grasp of the manual transmission but my parents let me take it out one night for a date. Ironically this date was with the girl I had been with in the station wagon post. Driving to her home it was apparent that I was having a hard time changing gears. Regardless of what gear I was in I kept the RPM’s really high. I didn’t make much use of the clutch either and by the time I pick her up the stench of transmission is overwhelming. As we were cruising down the street the RPM’s were super high and the engine was howling. All of the sudden BOOM! The car literally jumps in the air, the gear shifter drops out from under the floor, the front hood blows off and bright orange melted bits of metal shoot out all over the place. I yell “GET OUT!” and we both dive out of the car. Thankfully we weren’t going very fast and it had been snowing for days. By the time she got herself out of a snow bank and I had stopped sliding on the snow covered road we found the Omni smoking and dead. The engine had completely blown itself off of the frame.
Now, this should have killed the car. The mechanic told me and my dad that he had never seen anything like this before. The car itself was fine and all it needed was a new engine and transmission. In an ironic twist of fate a kid had killed himself when he totalled his Dodge Omni but the engine and transmission were fine so my dad worked out a deal to use those in ours. This was probably a really bad omen because not long after we got the Omni back my older brother had driven it into a highway divider. He was fine but the Omni was forever trashed.
