I wanted to give today's COTD to this comment, wherein TheKlic nails the Australian accent at its parodic best, á la, Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan on The Arsenio Hall Show. And it almost happened; except at the last minute, I stumbled on another comment. Sorry, Klic.
Yeah, I was won over in the 11th hour by one of those personal Jalop stories about the unexpected joy of owning a struggle buggy. It's a lovely, rantyish moral play by NikolaTeslaIsAHero, who actually wrote a comment with a narrative arc. That hardly ever happens.
By the way, Tesla; you're wrong. It's a very Jalop story.
I can pretty much 100% agree with this.
When I was in high school, which wasn't that long ago, I went to a school in a wealthy town. Kids had whatever they wanted, honestly; one kid had an STI that he managed to do a good amount of damage to over the years (he still does, and yes, his parents still paid for it).
Me, on the other hand; I had a Lumina. If ever there was a proper piece of shit that never died, it was the 1999 Chevrolet Lumina. The brakes were shit, the acceleration was shit, the mileage was shit, the handling was shit. Everything about the car was bad; I would have literally bought anything as an improvement.
I still own that stupid bastard. Forty-five thousand miles later and it still kicks over first try, and it taught me how to do knuckle-busting repairs, paint and bodywork, and the necessity of air-tools when you're dealing with a New Englandah's car. Sure, it's still shit on all accounts, but you know what? It's mine. It's mine, and I can tell you about every bolt, hole, line and scrape on it; hell, I did half of them myself.
No, it's not Jalop. It doesn't have to be. It's Walt, and Walt's one of my closest friends, and I wouldn't have it any other way.