MY 1994 SATURN SL2

by Craig Colby

At 9:25 a.m. on Thursday June 4, 2009, as I turned right off of Leslie Street onto Bond Avenue my car really started making noise. It had sounded like Archie’s jalopy for weeks, chugging and chirping. This was different. This was a heavy thunk-thunk-thunk coming from under the hood. It sounded like my car was having heart failure. I was a few hundred metres short of my workplace and the noise worsened every metre.

By the time I turned left onto Scarsdale Road and then quickly right into the company parking lot the car was shaking. I drove half way down the short parking lot, and turned right into a parking space. Then it happened. THUD! Right from under the hood. I could feel it as much as I heard it. I massaged the clutch and the gas to see if I could go just a little further to fit all the way into the parking spot. GRIND GRIND GRIND! The car moved painfully forward. With every last ounce of effort it had my 1994 Saturn SL2 ground out the last few centimeters of its 260,483 kilometre life.

I had known the end was close. My mechanics told me that it needed a new transmission, among other things. To fix it properly would cost $2,000. For $4,000 I could get a car 5-7 years old. Since we bought a Toyota Sienna minivan for our young family last year I only need a car to go back and forth to work. The repairs would be good money after bad. Since my wife was still on maternity until the end of July I had hoped to at least get through the summer. Unfortunately, my Saturn just didn’t have that much life left in it. Goodness knows it earned its rest.

In February of 1994 I needed a new car. My older brother Jim worked for General Motors and said so much research went into the Saturn the company was never going to make its money back. I liked the sound of that. I also liked the idea of buying a North American car. My girlfriend at the time helped me pick out the colour, a rich burgundy. It looked classy. When I pulled out of the lot for the first time I slipped my favourite song into the cassette player. Badlands by Bruce Springsteen was the fanfare that heralded my Saturn SL2 into my life.

That night I went to my work on my night off (I worked on TSN’s Sportsdesk so everyone worked nights) and took turns driving my friends up and down Leslie Street. My new car had 4 doors, automatic seat-belts, and a standard transmission that shifted into fifth gear! I felt like I had arrived. I finally had a grown up car. My Saturn SL2 would become a companion, taking me to and from the most important moments of my life.

On July 28, 1994 my best friend Dave, his wife Relita and I took it on a big baseball trip. We drove from Toronto to New York. We saw the Yankees play the Red Sox, and the Who’s Tommy on Broadway. We drove down to Baltimore and met her brother Reynaldo for a couple of games, then all of us went to Boston for 3 games. I thought I’d let Dave drive it at some point, but I didn’t. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t do it.

On December 27th 1994 it earned its first scars. I was visiting my older brother Jim in Connecticut for Christmas. I came down with the flu on December 27th. My car was the last one in the driveway and someone needed to go out for groceries. I gave my sister-in-law Lynn the keys. She came back in the house a few minutes later. Her face was pale. She said “I wrecked your car.” Their driveway was on a steep incline and I had cranked the steering wheel around so that if the brakes slipped it wouldn’t roll across the road into a neighbour’s tree. Lynn hadn’t put her foot on the brake when she started the car (she thought it was in gear like an automatic) and the car slid back into the brick wall at the side of the driveway. I said “don’t worry Lynn, we’ll get it fixed. It’s just a thing.” I was only half right. We could certainly fix it. My Saturn spent a day with the local dealership then it safely escorted my mother, father and me back to Canada. But I was wrong on one count. My car was certainly more than just a thing.

On January 2nd 1995 it took me to my new job at Discovery Channel. I started carpooling with some new friends. A constant source of entertainment was watching them recoil in discomfort every time the automatic seat belt slid over their shoulder. The drop-off was even better. It’s funny how the same people would need to be told over and over “you just have to open the door” as they tried to duck under and away from the mysterious device.

On December 19, 1997 my Saturn and I drove my girlfriend Nancy downtown to have dinner in the restaurant at the top of the CN tower. When Nancy got back in the car in the early hours of December 20th she was no longer my girlfriend. She was my fiancée.

On August 2nd 1998 I was pulled over by a police officer. I hadn’t renewed my license plate sticker. “Do you want to hear my lame excuse?” I told the officer. “No”. I told him anyway. It was midnight and I was returning a camera to the office at Discovery Channel. I had used the camera at my wedding the day before. In all the planning for the wedding the sticker had slipped my mind. The officer said “come to court and I’ll drop the charges”.

On April 18th 2003, my Saturn SL2 and I left Toronto at 4:00 a.m. We needed to be in Ottawa no later than 9:00 a.m. to make sure I made it into the pit, the area closest to the stage, for a Bruce Springsteen concert. They let the in first 300 people. I was 298.

On June 14th 2004 I walked out of Toronto East General Hospital and opened the back door of the car. I pulled up the carrier holding my one day old son Shane, and snapped it into the base fastened to the back seat. His first car ride was only five minutes long. Then we walked him into his home for the first time.

On June 23rd 2005 I received a call at work telling me my best friend Dave had died. I held myself together by gripping that steering wheel as I hard as I could. I just needed that car to get me home where I could fall apart. It did, then I did.

On February 27th 2009 my Saturn SL2 and I drove to Jay Peak Resort in Vermont to go skiing with my brother Jim. I wasn’t sure if the car would survive the trip. It had been with me exactly 15 years and the car was feeling its age. The tape deck hadn’t worked in 5 or 6 years. The air conditioning was gone for the last 2. It had arrived at the garage slumped across the back of tow truck more than once. I asked my mechanics, Maurizio and Peter, if the car could make this trip. They both told me with confidence yes.

So we set off on the adventure, just the two of us. I plugged my IPOD into the short distance FM broadcaster and we listened to every Bruce Springsteen album from 1973’s Greetings in Asbury Park to 1998’s Tracks. Winding through the Quebec back roads I was really happy to just be with my car. After all, this was my car. I had driven almost every kilometer the Saturn SL2 had traveled. My wife didn’t drive it because she can’t drive standard. In fact other than my sister-in-law’s incident I think the only people who had driven it were my brother Jim, who borrowed it to go up to Huntsville for a weekend, my younger brother Scott, who moved it for Nancy when I was out of town, and some guy who borrowed it to get some ice. I don’t ever recall sitting in the passenger seat. I had never been in the back seat. Well, not when it was moving anyway (wink). In fact, this is probably the last car that will ever be mine. The mini-van is communal property. So this was our last real time together, there and back across Ontario, Quebec and Vermont - my medium-red Saturn SL2 keeping me warm and safe as it sliced through cold wind and icy pavement.

Then there I was on June 4, 2009, sitting in my silent car in the parking lot at work. The car that had been with me through pretty much every important moment in my adult life had spent its dying breath to get me safely to work one last time.

The next day I watched as the tow truck pulled it away. When I told my five year-old son Shane the Saturn wasn’t coming back he wanted to go see it.

So Shane, my 11 month-old son Curtis, and I hopped in our Toyota Sienna and went to Greenwood Auto where my Saturn waited to have its snow tires and plates removed. Shane and I got out of the van. Curtis stayed in. He had only been in the Saturn once (and he can’t walk yet so this was just easier). But Shane had known this car his entire life. We walked around it and gave the hood an appreciative pat. The body was there but the spirit was gone.

I’ve never been sentimental about cars. I don’t give vehicles names. Still, I have to admit this car is special to me. I’m grateful to the people who built it, the engineers who designed it and to General Motors for trying to make something really good. I know that I will never feel the same way about another car. I know that inside the buckles and bolts, the glass and steel, and the dent-resistant molded polymer panels, are the echoes of my life.

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Craig Colby is a television executive producer, producer, director, writer and story editor. He runs a storytelling consulting and production service for businesses. Craig can be reached at craig@colbyvision.net.