Junkyard Find: 1986 Nissan Maxima Station Wagon

Nice story, but one nitpick: the headlamps are sealed-beam and probably glass, so they look crystal clear unlike many cars on the road now. I say this not to criticize your writing, but to criticize headlamps with poor longevity and to praise glass sealed-beams.

@kourt Thanks for the info. I have never seen a Maxima of this vintage up close so I tried to keep the car specific detail light, but it never occurred to me the model came with the old sealed beam style lights and that they would not fade in the same way as today's headlights. I can't even remember the last time I was in a car with such a sealed beam setup (heck the MY86 Cressida I had eight years ago did not even have them). The last car I saw in person with such a setup was an early 80s 240 a few months back.

Cute. I feel like you could've really "explored the space" with the white trash setting though. I wanted more.

I'm going to guess on the Easter Eggs: 1. The guy is named Max, a pun to Maxima. 2. The door was hit on the left side previously. Sis used this door 3. I'm guessing the Voice Alert system would have panicked if Max left the lights on? Are any of these correct?

@crabspirits Ty for the feedback. I suppose in hindsight I could have explored things a bit more but as I wrote it I felt a bit out of my depth. I've never seen a Maxima of this vintage in life, and my familiarity with the Nor Cal area and its inhabitants is light at best. I'll see if I can come up with some deeper characters/situations for the next used up car. @matador Wow you are quite perceptive, and I think you picked up on some of my own subconscious thinking because those were not my [conscious] references. 1. This is a loose reference to Michael Mann's film Heat. “I told you he’s not ever comin’ back”. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113277/quotes 2. Devil's Pals is a Simpsons reference: "have a friend in Diamond Springs who played bass me in The Devil’s Pals" http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0003023/quotes 3. This is a paraphrase of the final line of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: "So they beat on, shoes against the pavement, borne back ceaselessly into their past." http://bookriot.com/2012/07/26/the-last-line-of-the-great-gatsby-so-we-beat-on/

Oh, man, I got a sort of different picture of this car... not that this wasn't a compelling story! Max strung the brightly colored amplifier wires out in the driveway, laying out where they'd go once he ripped out the interior carpet and trim. He'd just scored a 200A amplifier he scored from a friend of a friend a grade up, for only $100. He also got a pair of cracked 12-inch speakers in the deal that he taped and epoxied until they sounded like new. A dumpster-found speaker box he'd stored since freshman year was just the ticket to fit behind the back seats, with a few hack-saw modifications. Sure, he'd lose the wagon capaciousness, but who needs to carry a bunch of stuff in high school anyway. He'd gotten the Maxima wagon at a rolling stock auction where Red Cross unloaded their donations... it was a risk, sure, but after a new battery and drying out the pools of water in the carpeting and bleaching the mold away, it was a pretty b*chin' ride! Max was worried about stock door speakers and how they rattled and buzzed ad mid-volume but if you can feel the beat, man, it don't matter. Of course, since he was ripping into the dash and wiring anyway, it's not too big a deal to swap out the head unit, LED's are so cool, man! The spinning LEDs on the display were such a good use of the last of the hoarded allowance since middle school. Fast forward 5 years... Once graduating high school and driving to and from the garage at the community college getting the associates degree, Max finally moves out of his parents' basement in east Oakland. He relocates into a low-rent apartment south of town that he shares with the drummer in his on-again off-again band while he works part time as an insurance adjuster to make ends meet. The wagon becomes the chase car for the rusted '89 Aerostar with the stage gear, and the preferred ride of the band members because of the plush upholstery and somewhat cooler than ambient AC. One fine Friday night the band is convoying down to the bar for a gig when the check engine light comes on. Max hasn't had enough money to buy beer, gas, and oil changes, so the oil has been suffering. "No big deal, it's probably the gas cap, that's what it always is, right?" Max thinks to himself as he follows the Aerostar off the exit and onto the feeder road. Not two miles later the engine suddenly gets much louder. Max figures something isn't right and flashes his lights to get Paul to pull the van over with him. The three other guys groan as the Maxima comes clattering to a halt in the dust. The engine sounds horrible so Max cuts it off, opens the hood for the third time ever, and walks around to look at it. The oil must be around here somewhere right? And what's that burning smell? Nothing for it but to press on until the bar, or at least a gas station with a garage. Except now the old wagon won't crank. Dang! The band needs to get to the bar and set up, if they ever want to be invited back, and a paying gig is hard to come by these days. The guys and Max pile into the Aerostar and wedge themselves in among the equipment in back... but wait, there's valuable stuff in that car, think of all the time and money sunk into that sound system! So Max goes back and writes a note that he hopes will keep the tow truck drivers away for a day or two, so he can come back and strip out all the audio gear. A successful gig on Friday and a flop of a daytime show on Saturday meant Max didn't get back out to the old car until Sunday afternoon. By some miracle it was still sitting there, the windows already starting to cloud with dust. The radio and speakers came out easily enough, as well as the switches and aftermarket fog lights. Those will definitely bu useful for the next ride. As Max drives away with the goods tossed into the Aerostar he sees a tow truck in the rear view slow and pull over... Well, that was too bad, but Max knows where Red Cross auctions their vehicles, and he already has the accessories to keep his lifestyle going, if only he can save up the money. Max feels a bit melancholy but can't quite put a finger on why... the car was really just an appliance to him - no love lost there - but somehow it became a part of his life, always in the background, shading his experiences. While Max moves on with his life, all these annoying letters in the mail from the city, what gives? The Maxima languishes on the impound lot and no-sales a couple of auctions, until one day Joe from accounting is browsing the online auctions and sees that rear window, the one that none of the glass shops can source, and figures that instead of replacing his wagon he'll scoop this one up, have the glass shop swap the window over, and re-coup his money at the crusher.