(Sledge) Hammer Time: Get Out of My Life!

Sledgehammers aren’t a common mechanic’s tool. Yet there it was. In my neighbor’s hands as he sought to knock some sense into his old Saab. The trunk had leaked from day one and the wiring harness made the rear lights as helter-skelter as a Charlie Manson jailhouse flashback. The cops pulled him over for the third time in a week and as a special, “Thank you!”, to his car, he decided to give it an early Christmas present. Jersey style.

“You cheap, son of a gun, macker-quacker!!!” My neighbor was more Pesci than PG with that line. I saw him heave the sledgehammer up into the atmosphere and then “Thunk!”. A dent on the trunk. But not as big as I expected. Then the second one “Thwack!”. That did it. Strangely enough, the Saab’s trunk area seemed better aligned than ever before. Of course it was all bent. But it was together. He could have thought ‘Mission Accomplished’ at that point. But the artiste was in the moment. Within a few swings from his mighty Thor, his Swede’s rear end became more droopy looking than Al from Happy Days.

I wanted to do the same thing at that moment. But I couldn’t. My car at the time was the late Barnacle Bitch. She always seemed to have something a little wrong every time I drove her. Electrics. Steering. Just the feel of the damned thing. Old Benzes were built by Germans. These new-ish ones were devised by cost cutting Nazis from the 7th circle of Dante’s Inferno.

Though I wanted to take a meat cleaver and customize the entire car, I needed to sell it. Big time. It cost $12,600 and the recession seemed to make it depreciate worse than a Fannie Mae mortgage. So I primped it up, parked it, and tried to think about other things. Everyone loved that thing. Even my mom whose taste in cars rarely go beyond the color.

But for a tightwad like me, that S500 was the financial equivalent of MC Hammer.I wanted my money back damn it!… and it took two years… but I sold it for $13,800. Which covered it’s repairs and a much needed R&R for yours truly.

So what was your unholy rolling shitbox of a vehicle that made you want to Pacino its innards into a fine red mist?