When I was younger, my parents got me a little blue pedal car. I loved it a lot. I would pedal as fast as I could to build up speed, then turn hard to power slide across the pavement. I’d do burnouts, and all around be a little daredevil.
Of course kids grow up. I left my little blue pedal car behind and it remained a memory. Several years ago, I was working at my current place of employment, a crap ton of hours. I mean 14 hour days several days a week. The pay was good, for the time, but I was always exhausted. I saved my pennies, because I had no time to even spend the money.
I paid a lot extra on my car at the time, a Nissan Xterra. I liked it, but honestly I only got it because I was trying to get my first auto loan. It was a crap interest rate, because it was my first real credit on that scale. I took what I could get.
One day I just happened to be scrolling through autotrader when I discovered a car that I had been searching for. It was a 2012 Mitsubishi Evo GSR, oddly enough, sporting blue. I was definitely interested, but at 30K, I had my reservations. It was in incredible shape, and extremely low miles for the year.
I drove out, it was a bit of a drive, but I really wanted to look at it. My first car was a Mitsubishi Eclipse, so I always wanted the older brother. I walked onto the lot and found it sitting in the corner by its self. I went to find a salesman to open it up for me. I opened the door and sat into the freshly cleaned Recaro seat. It felt incredible, and the moment I grabbed the shifter all the memories of my Eclipse flooded back in.
The gauges were not stock anymore, but a high quality replacement. I looked in the glove box and found cords for a tuning system. I opened the hood and everything that was once plastic was replaced with high quality stainless or aluminum. The entire cooling system was swapped to a better racing version, and the exhaust was high performance name brand. This thing was an enthusiast built model.
I decided I must have it, and left my credit info for the salesman to run. The next day I get a call saying we’re good to go. I drove in, super excited, traded in my current car, and drove off with my new Evo. I was a little rusty on the stick-shift. By the time I got down the road it all came back to me though. I was on cloud nine.
I had always wanted one from the day I saw it. Fate had a sense of humor, and my parents immediately said I got my little blue car back. For what its worth, I never was a daredevil in the thing. I was too scared. The car had been tuned in a way that if you floored it, it took off like a rocket. The one time I gave it 3/4 gas it nearly launched me off the road.
Honestly, I didn’t want to beat up the car. I was too proud of it. Plus with how expensive it was, I didn’t want to damage anything. I only put about 4k miles on it that year, I drove my other car around when it wasn’t nice out. So in 2015 my 3 year old Evo didn’t even have 20k miles on it. I took it on a trip to Maryland and nearly went deaf from the exhaust, right at 65-70mph it would resonate loudly, and made it so you could barely have a conversation.
I truly loved the car though, and would have loved to have kept it. Yes, you read that right. I had my dream car, and I decided it was just not feasible for me to keep it. For starters the payment was high, at least for me back then. I knew I wanted to buy my house, and I needed to save money any way I could. I made a hard decision and put her up for sale after a year and a half.
It took a bit, but I found a buyer, and I watched her drive off. I miss it all the time. Every time I hop in the car I find myself reaching for the shifter and a clutch. Its just habit. I now drive a 2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R, so its a little nimble, but it’ll never be my Evo.
EK Creates 