Frank the Tank

A few weeks ago we lost someone very dear to us.

Frank the Tank.

 

He was our car. Our awesome the little engine that could car. Our gritty rode tough car. Our I probably took that turn too tight car. Our over packed car.

I’m not gonna lie I cried walking away from this car.

Way back in 2005, I was debating my mom and stepdad about bringing my ’97 Jeep Wrangler up to Boston, where I was attending college. I wanted to bring it up so badly but that was a hard ‘no’ in their book. They didn’t want me to have issues with it getting broken into with its soft top and it’s essential lack of trunk for any sort of transporting of things, and it was ‘old’ with a ‘bunch’ of miles on it. Plus, it was standard, which would suck in Boston traffic.

I was pissed.

My stepdad was even offering to get me a new car. I was still pissed.

I did the asshole like 20 year old thing and shit talked all the cars he suggested. Poor guy tried so hard with emails of types of cars and I had to be like “Oh that’s cool, but how about this one?” sending back some other car to every car that he sent. Again, I’m an ass.

The real kicker that he has never let me live down was that when he suggested the Scion XA, I responded with “umm, that’s not my style.” Come on, it is weird looking. It’s like a bug, and not the VW kind.

I test drove a Cruz and the Scion XA, ultimately agreeing with him that the Scion XA was the better car for me, even if it wasn’t my style.

Price named it Frank the Tank, a la, Old School, the movie staring Will Ferrell. It was a dorky purple car, but it partied hard and kicked some ass.

We took this car EVERYWHERE!!! It did EVERYTHING.

We drove it all over New England for adventures down to The Cape and up to Maine. He ventured through the snow to go to Satan’s Kingdom.  We took him to the top of Mt. Washington for a fun sunrise trip up the mountain. He was overloaded with too many bags of soil on several occasions. We did a road trip down to Charlotte. He spun out in the snow when I coasted way too fast down a hill on a ski trip once. He was on the track at Watkin’s Glen. And Price loaded him up with my dried wedding bouquet, the 2 dogs, and the last of the important, fragile things for our move down to FL.

But just a few hundred miles shy of 150,000 miles. RIP.

Price was driving it home from work when it just stopped working. Thankfully, he was able to get over to the shoulder safely since the transmission was not working and no matter how hard he tried to get it into gear and for it to go, it was not going anywhere.

I’m bummed that Frank didn’t make it to 150K miles with us, but at least he will live on with the next owner. One of the guys at the repair shop where Price had it towed to, offered us $500 for it since he could easily put in a transmission in there in his spare time to give to his mother in law. At least, she gets a car and he won’t get junked since us paying $1,300+ for a transmission on a car that already needed a bunch of work didn’t make much sense for us.

So, Price got to work and found a great car to take the place of Frank. We drove it over to drop some things off with the mechanic taking the car. It felt like we were betraying Frank to have the new car there. Poor Frank.

But I now get to look out for it in case we ever see it on the road again. I really hope I do one day, and I will probably get choked up seeing it.

Frank the Tank. RIP