This COAL series has been a really rewarding journey for me, as I re-live the memories of owning, loving, and occasionally swearing at the cars of my past. I’ve realized […]
Before the grand finale of my COAL series I thought I would pause for an interlude to talk about two cars from my formative years. This week is the first. […]
Our garage in 2015 contained my Fusion and the Subaru Forester as described in the previous COAL. My wife, now gainfully employed at Ford, was driving the Fusion while I […]
The new company that I joined after leaving GM decided that my prior experience working in China was useful, so they proceeded to send me and the family back to […]
In late 2004 GM sent me on a 3 year assignment in China, bringing the whole family along. We sold our house and our vehicles, and settled into expat life […]
There comes a time in many a growing family’s life when function rules over style and getting a minivan was in order. That was the realization that my wife and […]
In 2001 my rapidly growing family outgrew the Pontiac Sunfire coupe that had served us faithfully and reliably for 6 years. We had a GMC Jimmy that was about to […]
My Beretta GTZ had been an enjoyable car but going on 6 years the Quad 4 engine was starting to emit the little telltale wisps of white smoke signaling an […]
My first years working at GM I was assigned to work on the much maligned J-car Chevrolet Cavalier. But by 1990 it was much improved from when it was originally […]
It was 1996 and I was the not-so-proud owner of a lumbering GMC Jimmy. That will be the subject of another COAL, but suffice to say that once the new […]
photo by W. Stopford It was June 1990, and I had just graduated from grad school and started my first week as an engineer at General Motors. For someone […]
(Welcome Gene, our new Wednesday COALer) In my 2nd year of college, I scored an engineering internship at a company out of state, in neighboring Indiana. That meant that I needed […]