My Car

Vincent Chui

Dr. Grover

English 269 A

February 2, 2012

"My '94 Mazda Rx-7 R2"

The most important and influential thing to me on the planet is my car. I fell in love with the car as soon as I laid eyes on it. When I first saw it I was eight years old watching a Japanese animated show called "Initial D" it was called the "Mazda Rx-7". I was instantly drawn to the car's expressive slippery aerodynamic shape that drastically contrasted with the 1990's cars at that time like the Lamborghini Countach or the Nissan Skyline's boxy straightedge designs and departed from the blandness that almost all Japanese cars suffer from. Almost two decades later, the dream of owning the car still lingered in my mind just as I was beginning one of the biggest milestones in many people's life, my teenage years. I bought the car with the money I saved up after selling my computer I had built the year before and with the help of my dad's credit line to pay the remaining amount. The car gave me what I was looking for just as I was in approaching the major milestone that was a sense of responsibility and freedom.

Unlike having pretty clothes or good looks, having your own car as a teenager meant you were somebody that makes their own rules and choices. Choosing my own car was a big responsibility you have to think about running costs and insurance, but what I only cared about was what every teenager did; what did it looked like and what was its top speed. As a teenager everything in your world revolved around the car it was your pass to life and freedom. Before the car teenagers were dragged around by their parents that meant no job or money because your parents weren't going to take you everywhere you wanted and no social life because not every parent wasn't going to give their children their own expensive toy to crash and wrap around a telephone pole. So as like every teenager I had a overpowering sense of individually that often meant it involved speeding and rolling burnouts through stoplights for attention. I soon earned a job because the car being a "Wankel Rotary" and "Turbocharged" meant it drank gasoline and engine oil faster than what spending money your parents gave you. I soon gained a sense of responsibility, all the speeding and burnouts meant there was a cost to every action that I wasn't aware of before I realized I would be the one picking up the bill from now on. Before I owned my little sense of property I never knew the power of what the dollar gave you and what it meant to treat property with respect.

My biggest drive during my coming of age was the sense of "freedom". The freedom the car gave me was more than where did I choose to go, it also meant who