Being the proud owner of a power beast, Chevy El Camino ’82 is an awesome experience. You have a true muscle car hidden in the shell of a pick-up truck wannabe chassis. People who sees you driving this beast might roll their eyes, smirk at the ugliness, and even question its existence.
Little do they know that under the hood, which is spacious enough to hide a full-grown body, sits an awesome V8 5l 305 power engine, generating about 150 horsepower. Enough to challenge most cars anywhere … except if the roads are a little wet as that causes unnecessary wheel spins 🙂 Granted fuel consumption is rather ridiculous, with about 10-12 mpg and a 12 gallon tank. So, for commuting 20 miles each way it’s not an ideal vehicle, but I love it.
I use this beast to bring the kids to school every morning. They are a little intimidated by the sound of the engine, perhaps a little embarrassed too, but largely accept their mode of transportation.
If you’ve seen ‘Uncle Buck’ then you would remember his old banger, and the amount of exhaust fumes it generated. Well most V8 engines does produce larger amount of smoke, so when I pull in at the local elementary school to drop kids off most people cover their noses. Not cool when the car in front of me is the Tesla car which doesn’t even have an exhaust.
The other morning when driving down the local country road, the local sheriff obviously wanted to check out my wheels. I had barely passed the spot where he was parked, when he floored his cruiser and came in behind me. He turned on the Christmas lights and pointed at me to pull over.
It was my first time to get pulled over by the cops, since I was pulled over for suspected car theft 20 years ago. Just because I had long hair didn’t mean I stole the nice car I was driving! However, it wasn’t my first encounter with the law – I’m a rebel and you know it!
Having just moved to another state, my license plates were brand new, vehicle registration and inspection stickers temporary and my license was also a print-out. Something tells me the trooper was not impressed with the pieces of paper I shared with him. He looked down on the paper pile and then back at me, then at the kids.
“I assume the kids have seat belts on?”
“Of course officer, I’m a responsible parent! I might drive a shitty old banger, but safety comes first”.
He went back to his cruiser, obviously to triple check my criminal past and to see if my car had been part in a drive by at some point. Everything came back all clear. Then he handed me my papers back and told me I was clear to go.
Just because Sheriff Lyle ‘Cottonmouth’ Wallace had pulled me over, on a school run morning, he had now screwed up my tight schedule. I kicked the V8 engine into drive and left the cop surrounded in a vail of smoke while I jolted down the country road towards the school.
Good thing is, I didn’t get a ticket – just a friendly nod from the local sheriff 🙂