My second car was an orange-gold 1967 Mercury Cougar, the first year for the model. I paid Billy K. $300 for it a few months after the VW went south. It didn't have a single body panel without dents and the hood would fly up if you went faster than thirty. I had to use a bicycle cable to lock it closed. Locking and unlocking the hood quickly became a pain in the ass. That was the car I hit the school bus with. I was waiting at a light to make a left onto Railroad Ave. from Wellwood and gunned it when the light went green. The car didn't have a limited-slip differential (what's called "Posi-Traction" in a General Motors product) so it spun to the left smack dab into a school bus waiting for the light. The accident could've turned out much worse for me but the woman driving the bus was a good friend of my sister's and she pretty much let me off the hook. I don't even think she called the police...

The Cougar lasted a little less than a year and then it was time to go searching yet again for another set of cheap, serviceable wheels. Because my brother Mario was a Mopar man (and a mechanic) I thought I should go with a Chrysler, Plymouth or Dodge. I found a 1971 Plymouth Satellite Sebring in the Pennysaver and paid somewhere around $500 for it. It was a sweet little ride - powered by the venerable 318 - and every time I jumped behind the wheel I felt like Richard Petty in his famous number 43 stock car. I had just put about $800 worth of work into the car when a kid in an AMC Pacer hit me head on as I headed to Music Land to buy a set of strings for my guitar. The bad news? The Satellite was totalled. The good news: I sued the kid in Small Claims Court and got my $800 back.

I set out to find another Satellite and ended up with a green '73, for around $700. The less said about that piece of crap.the better.

After the debacle of the '73 Satellite I went backwards in time yet again and scooped up a 1970 Chrysler Newport. It was cream with a black vinyl roof and the largest car I'd ever owned, even though it was a two door. The damn thing was fast, though: the 383 under the hood moved it along nicely. I was coming back from CBGBs one night when the power died, the car went dark and I was left sitting at the side of the road for a few hours waiting for a tow truck. There had been an electrical fire beneath the dashboard, all the wiring burnt up and my mechanic told me to get rid of it. I did.

I took a break from Mopars when I noticed my mechanic had a 1971 rust-brown 4-door Chevy Impala for sale for an obscene price: $100.The Impala was the only car I've ever owned A) which had working air-conditioning and B) on which I actually MADE money. I drove it for six months or so and then got broadsided coming back from my friend Mike's house one night. The damage was confined to the driver's side rear door and the car was still very driveable but the other guy's insurance company still coughed up $600. The Impala suffered a cracked head not too long after and also ended up in the local junkyard.

I took the $600 and bought my one and only Cadillac: a black 1966 Sedan DeVille. It had something shy of 80,000 miles on it and was in nearly pristine shape. It had power everything and I installed a custom sound-system, a removeable Panasonic cassette deck and some Pioneer 6" x 9" speakers in the rear deck. The first tape I popped in was a Black Sabbath compilation tape and I still remember cranking that thing up as loud as it would go while banging my head to Supernaut. The Caddy got a lousy seven miles to the gallon and lasted me just about thirty days. I demolished it when I came around a bend on Woodhaven Blvd. in Queens and hit a four-foot-by-four-foot stack of Daily News Sunday editions, being unloaded from a van into the right lane by two guys, one of whom I thought I killed when he jumped out of the way. What can I say? It was four in the morning, the roadway was dark and I just didn't see them. Luckily, no one was injured and the cops were very nice - which is more than I can say for my mother. When I woke her up with my frantic phone call, she screamed into the phone, "DIDN'T I TELL YOU NOT TO DRIVE IN QUEENS?!"  I managed to talk my mechanic into driving out from Long Island and towing me all the way back. I sold the Caddy for parts, earning back $400.

After a detour into General Motors products I decided a return to Mopar was in order. Once again I scoured the Newsday classifieds (back then there was no craigslist, no eBay and - for all I know - nothing that remotely resembled the Internet) and before too long found a 1972 Plymouth Fury. It was a two-door, metallic brown with matching vinyl roof and a 360 under the hood. Six days after buying the car I was sitting at a red light at Jackson Avenue in Queens with my friend Paul when I was rear-ended by a Checker cab. I was knocked unconscious and if not for Paul's quick thinking - from the passenger side he reached over with his left foot and hit the brakes, while grabbing the steering wheel -  we probably would've both been killed. We crawled out the passenger door, falling into a spreading puddle of gas (good thing neither of us smoked!), shaking glass from our hair. The Checker must've been doing eighty, considering the damage done to the Fury. I sued the cab company, eventually garnering roughly $6,000, part of which I used to buy a...

...a 1974 Chevy Nova. If I had time to shop around I probably would've bought something else. But I was commuting back and forth to a new job and couldn't afford to miss a day. The Nova was available locally and cheap at $700. Compared to the New Yorker it was bare bones transportation with a bench seat, column shift, power nothing and hideous maroon paint job. It did, however, have a 350 under the hood and moved even faster than the New Yorker, due to its lighter weight. I left rubber all over New Jersey in that Nova and only sold it (for $700, what I paid for it) when a friend of mine offered me a high-mileage 1979 Jeep Wagoneer for free.

I wanted another four-wheel drive vehicle and realized it was time to buy something new, rather than the rusted-out shit-boxes to which I'd grown accustomed. I arranged a bank loan and again took to the classifieds, locating a 1987 Jeep Wrangler in the northwest corner of New Jersey. It was a first-year model, Colorado Red with black interior, hard and soft tops and 31,000 miles on it, being sold by a young woman returning to college for her sophomore year. I paid roughly $8,000 for it, more than all the cars I'd previously purchased combined. I drove that Jeep for fourteen years, sinking ungodly amounts of money into it and finally letting it go after it caught fire on Route 1 & 9 Southbound, just over the Pulaski Skyway. I sold it on eBay and got a respectable $3,500 for it from a used car dealer in Scottsdale, Arizona (they shipped it out on in a railroad container).

About six months after buying the Mercedes I was involved in an accident while on my way to WFMU to do Aerial View. A young woman in a Isuzu Rodeo made a left in front of me and I caught the rear corner of her bumper with the right front quarter of my car. I went through an uphill battle with the insurance company but eventually got them to pay off properly. My mechanic said I should get the car fixed, that the engine and drivetrain were in great shape, so I did. I'm still driving it today and hope to hang on to it for many more years, though this past winter has taken its toll and the cancer of rust may finally send it to its final resting place. What's next? Good question. Maybe another 300D. Maybe another Jeep. Maybe, just maybe, an electric car...