The Story of My Plymouth Neon

My Plymouth Neon has had a short but brave life. I got her on December 13th, 1994, after only a week's deliberation and research, with number-crunching assistance from my dad and Jeff Ouye. She wasn't a Mazda Miata convertible, but she was much more practical, she was still cute, and she was teal (my favorite color)...This picture was taken in February, 1995...

My Neon was well taken care of...Until December, 1996, she stayed in an underground garage at my apartment, and when I drove to work, she stayed out of the hot California sun in the USAA parking garage. There was an incident in that parking garage when she was only six months old that traumatized her, but it was only minor damage, and she was completely healed of those injuries with only a little emotional scarring leftover...

In December, 1996, I starting working for Netcom in San Jose, and I didn't really have a place of my own to live, so my Neon ended up driving many more miles than she was used to back and forth from Mountain View to Roseville...I'm sure she could have gone the whole way all by herself if she had ever needed to...

By April, 1997, I knew that I was going to be spending six months in England starting in July, so I had set everything up so that my insurance was paid, my car payments were taken care of, and my parents were going to let her stay at their house when I was gone...but alas, that was not to be...

To recap, on July 7th, 1997, Marcus and I left Roseville at about 6:30am and made good time all the way up the California Central Valley heading for Seattle in the next two days...

...but we had a slight problem about 8 miles north of Weed...

This is a view looking south at our crash site, but we had been traveling north when it happened...Needless to say, Day One of our trip was pretty much shot, and we had to cancel our room in Lincoln City, Oregon, since we obviously weren't going to make it all the way there by that night...We stayed in Weed at the Motel Hi-Lo just a brief walk from where my poor car was towed and left...

When we got back to Roseville on the 15th, this is how I notified my friends via e-mail...

Neon says "Bye"

I hope you all enjoyed your last rides in my Neon, since it is no longer.

Last Monday, on the first day of our trip, we had made it all the way to Weed to fill up with gas, but 8 miles north, I glanced away at just the wrong second, started to drift off the left shoulder(which was only six inches past the line, then went into gravel) since the road was starting to veer right. When I turned back into the lane, I caught the edge of the gravel, which made us spin across both lanes, so that we were opposite the flow of traffic by the time we rolled down the little 6-foot rocky hill into a field.

Well, we didn't actually roll completely, since we just ended up upside-down. The car just flipped over the driver's side and stayed there. As we were hanging upside-down in our seatbelts, Marcus asked me to turn the car back on for the power windows, but I reminded him that my car doesn't have power windows. My window had broken, so I climbed out that way. As we were waiting for the tow truck(since the CHP was already there to call one for us) and looking at my poor upside-down car, I said, 'Well, at least I really didn't need my car for the next six months...I guess I don't have to worry about where my parents will store it, let alone the car payment or insurance expense...' Marcus kept asking me when I was going to get 'cross'. He was surprised I wasn't more upset about the whole thing.

Marcus and I are both fine, but I do have a pretty nasty bruise on my knee where I hit the side of the car when it flipped, I guess. Nothing in the car got broken, but the ice chest and our water bottles did dump all over us in the flipping. We got towed back to Weed, got on the phone to my mom to start dealing with insurance stuff, and it ended up that my mom offered to drive her car up and take the train from Dunsmuir back home, so we could use her car for the rest of the trip! I sure didn't expect that response! Actually, if I hadn't been visiting relatives I haven't seen in 3 years, it probably wouldn't have happened...

We ended up doing everything else as planned, although one full day behind by the time I got off the phone with the insurance adjuster on Tuesday morning. My mom's car gets even better gas mileage than mine, but it does have more of a struggle getting up the mountains. We still enjoyed ourselves for the rest of the trip, and we made it all the way back from Seattle today at 8:10pm by leaving at 6:30am.

So, is anyone asking you for crash test results on the Neon? Tell them mine sacrificed itself, but protected us wonderfully with barely even any scratches on us. The problem that we're finding now is that no one is selling their Neons, so we're struggling to settle on a fair amount with the insurance company. I guess everyone else likes their Neons as much as I liked mine. Poor thing. :( She's said her last good-bye now, let alone any more "hi"s...

Now that you know more details from my e-mail message, these pictures will make sense to you. This is the only glimspe we have of the car actually at the site of the crash(note the time and date stamp on the camera shot), but it's already turned over, since they wouldn't let us take anything out of the car when it was still upside-down. The only reason we have this image is because Marcus was testing his camcorder, and I sure wish he panned a little so we could see more of the car! Marcus had just barely turned off his camcorder when we crashed. I thought that was too bad, since we could have had footage of our little roller-coaster ride!
(Can you see the California Highway Patrol car up the hill? For a closer look, click on the picture...)

After Bill's Towing took us back to Weed, my poor Neon was left hooked up to the tow truck in the gravel yard across the street from Bill's Towing. It doesn't look too bad from the passenger side...

...but when you see which side rolled, you can tell why it was totalled. It still doesn't look that bad, but they told me the unibody construction makes it too expensive to repair...

I think it looks a little sad and like it has a bad headache from this view...

What else can I say about this picture? I think my face says it all... :(

I did get my Mystery Science Theatre decal out of the back window, but the Truth Is Out There sticker was stuck on too well in the heat. The only thing I could take with me was the outside ring of the hood ornament. I would have taken the whole Chrysler star, but it was five separate triangles, and too much trouble for such a hot day. This ring and the owner's manual are about all that's left...that and no car loan, no insurance for the next six months AND about $4500 in the bank, that is...

But now for the rest of the story...After I'd already been in England for a week, I finally got around to replying about an icon to my website from Robert E. Reeves', but when I went to his page to check, what did I find but a flipping car as my icon! Funny for the moment, but not what I want to remember forever, let alone for others to remember me! So, it has now been changed to what you see on the right side above, which is a road sign with my 'bp' monogram if you couldn't quite tell...Thank you, Robert, for designing these, and my thanks is to immortalize your little joke here. :)