I Found My Old Car!

My Laser when it was new.. in Ohio

Don't you sometimes wonder what happens to your old cars after you sell them? Who is driving them? In what state? Well, I might have just found my first car in a parking lot in a strip mall in Delray, Florida. It's the exact same model, color and interior and it even appears to have a little dent I sold it with in the back bumper. Which means it just could be my old car.

Some of my friends might tell you my first car was a white Suzuki Samurai, but that was a hand-me-down from my parents. Yes, my dad used to commute in that thing. But the first car that I got to select and buy myself was a used Plymouth Laser RS Turbo. It did have 40,000 miles at the time, but they were all highway-- the car was in pristine condition.

For those of you that aren't' familiar with the Plymouth Laser, it was the (ever-so-slightly) more upscale sister car to the Mitsubishi Eclipse and Eagle Talon, which were nearly identical. The car was only made from 1990-1994, giving way to the Talon and finally, the more popular Eclipse. But in it's heyday it was awesome. The RS turbo had a silky smooth leather-wrapped stick shift and 190 hp of turbo-charged nuttiness, without anything like all-wheel drive to keep it grounded. Boys loved to drive it, and most girls didn't know how.

It was a very cool American car for the time, really. It had automatic pop up headlights, an automatic seatbelt and a very cool graphic equalizer which my friend Michael C turned into it's own instrument one crazy morning much to the delight of the whole car load. It didn't have a CD player, but tape decks were still the norm then. One problem I did have was that the hubcaps were alway falling off. After a while, I just stopped trying to replace them - like the owners of the above car also obviously did.

Could this be it?

The one I found was showing it's age. It was banged up, the windshield wipers are rusted, the pop-up headlamps are forever stuck in the "on" position, the automatic seat belt obviously doesn't return to the right position and the fabric seats are ripped. But still, it could have been mine. Even if it's not, just seeing one on the street again made me feel more than a little bit of nostalgia for my long lost Laser.

Steve's pictures make it look even older!