#Talon

I’ve been very fortunate to attend eight driving schools. This one was definitely the slowest, but the fun factor was unquestionably among the highest. I was driving a four-passenger Honda Talon 1000X-4; a fantastic machine for the miles of trails present in the northwestern region of Maui. Yes, that Maui.

Featuring stadium seating for the rear passengers, Honda Talons are quite accommodating. Utilizing a 116.4-inch wheelbase (think Dodge Challenger), they are powered by a 999 cc parallel twin-cylinder engine. The acceleration was very good, even with the throttle rarely pinned to the floor. When was the last time you said that about a rental car – or off-roader?

There’s not a soul in here who doesn’t, from time to time, go and make a nuisance of themselves in a dealer showroom. I’m not talking about wasting the time of the sales staff, or even helping themselves to copious amounts of free coffee during scheduled maintenance. No, I’m talking about simply wandering through the showroom, looking at all the metal merchandise.

Today, it’s easy. Drive or hoof it down to the brand of choice, examine whatever’s caught our fancy at this minute, and hightail it back out again once the Dealer Principal starts giving you the evil eye. It wasn’t that simple as a kid though, whether it was thanks to being chased out by surly managers or simply living far enough away that one depended on the parental unit to drive them there.

Which brings us to today’s question: what was the first car you remember seeing in a showroom? Given the photo above, one shouldn’t have too much trouble guessing my answer.

While assembling my website pages with links to every Eagle and Mitsubishi car I have ever photographed in wrecking yards, I learned something troubling: I had never shot an Eagle Talon. Sure, there was this Plymouth Laser Turbo and this much never Mitsubishi Eclipse, but no examples of the Eagle Division’s most beloved — well, only— sports coupe.

I resolved that I’d shoot the next Talon I spotted in a wrecking yard; that car turned out to be this one in Denver, from the final model year of Eagle.

Chances are, if you read TTAC as part of a balanced breakfast, you probably had more than a few toy cars scattered around the house like rice at a wedding when you were an OshKosh B’gosh-clad tike. These diminutive metal replicas lurked deep within the shag-pile carpeting, lying with their pointy sides up, waiting to rend bare feet asunder.

In later years, these toys were supplanted by trips to real dealerships, where I no doubt made a nuisance of myself as a prepubescent boy who was interested in examining the new metal for that model year. There are three models whose image remain firmly imprinted on my mind after seeing them for the first time through the lens of a youngster’s eye. Surely, you’ve got one too.