Awhile back I read a challenge in someone's Epinion: go back and delete or rewrite your worst Epinion. Your real Richard Smoker.

Well, it wasn't a difficult choice: this one was my third, and it got five ratings from hardy souls, eight member visits and no comments (which proves how merciful people can be). I printed off a copy, took it out in the e-desert, took the old e-.22 and did what had to be done.

Thus continues the cycle of death and rebirth. Mercy for mercy.

Please note: don't be intimidated by the shortness of the scroll bar to the right. Half of this Epinion is targeted product review; a story involving it was saved for last and takes up half the length. You can read either, both or neither, as suits you. Not everyone likes cars; not everyone likes stories. (I am the Burger King of Epinions, I guess. Bleah.)

I bought my white 1990 2WD Toyota Pickup--drolly dubbed the 'White Lightning'--in June 1990 as my first real car. Paid a little over $10K for it, borrowed from my mom. 4 cylinders. Much more powerful than any horse. (There. All you automotive wonks, you cannot NH me now for failing to disclose horsepower info. Ha!)

(We won't count the 1961 Corvair that went bonk-bonk-bonk as the speedometer needle fluctuated by 20 mph either direction and which was eventually stolen (proving just how stupid criminals can be). I didn't count the '76 Buick Skyhawk, either, which also did the bonk-bonk-bonk transmission-going-south thing, but for which I eventually coerced a refund out of the chiseless.)

I'm still driving the Lightning, a little over 80,000 miles later. It's mostly been pretty good, provided I didn't think of it as having a warranty and on the condition that one assumes absolute dishonesty of all Toyota dealer service departments. I mean it. I have more regard for the decency of more blatant forms of organized crime, which usually at least show some business savvy. Three dealers, two cities, three slimeholes. There will not be a fourth.

Reliability: I've been pretty careful about the routine maintenance. At 65K miles, the factory battery passed away just after I got back from a 3400-mile road trip, filling me with dark thoughts of what it would have been like to be stuck out near Evanston, Wyoming. It came with Dunlop tires that, by 70K miles, were finished; not bad at all. It's never left me stranded by a road (though it could have, and has probably wished to).

Brake design flaw: this truck has suffered from brake pulsation since the early days, and nothing helps--not even $700 in brake subsystem replacement. The brakes have never failed, but due to this out-of-round feeling, the brake linings surely wear out a lot sooner than they should because it's obvious that somehow heat buildup is causing the metal to deform due to a bad design.

Collisions: not only did I walk away from a broadside hit at 30 mph from a low-grade imbecile in her '83 Olds Cutlass, I drove the truck away after explaining to her the concept of insurance information. She, on the other hand, paid for her error with her bumper and grille. Not a pane of glass broke in the Lightning, even in the window of the passenger door she pushed in. Either I lead a charmed life, or this is a rugged little steed.

Safety: it doesn't handle very well on slick surfaces, though the new Michelin tires have helped in that regard. There is a lot of wind resistance on the freeway if you don't drop the tailgate, and in high winds I feel like I'm on WSWW (World Steering Wheel Wrestling) Ultra Mayhem. (Can you smell what the Parrot is cookin'?) Semi truck slipstreams throw it around about like 40 mph winds.

Acceleration: without a load, it goes up hills like a mountain goat--though I sometimes have to do that in 4th gear on this 5-speed. For passing and quick starts its performance depends only on your shifting timing; if I need to blow the doors off an RV on the way past the sweet onion plantations of Walla Walla, no sweat--just have to accept the slipstream effect. I've had it up to 90 mph for brief periods and it would surely have gone faster--probably could have buried the needle at 110. Wanna drag? (Read some of my early reviews.)

Gas mileage: was billed as 26 mph highway/23 city, and that's been about right. Fuel tankage is 13.7 gallons, giving it about a 325-mile one-way radius. When the indicator hits E, you've got about two gallons left. It has the usual stupid Toyota gas gauge, the one that gives you no meaningful indication of how many actual gallons of gas you have--I determined the above using the manual and the pump.

Crappy cheap plastic: not sure why, but a lot of little plastic items unrelated to real reliability have shown weaknesses. Seatbelt keepers; seatbelt buckle supports. Factory radio LCD. Of course, obviously I'd rather have a cruddy-looking, cracked sun visor while driving nonchalantly down the highway than be standing by the road with my disabled vehicle contemplating the wonderful plastic of the cab.

Glass: excellent. I've already hinted to this effect, but later in the essay I'll tell you more.

Dealer service: there is none. My experience is this: to compare Toyota dealer service to an honest independent mechanic is like comparing Applebee's restaurant to the locally-owned upscale meat-and-potatoes restaurant where your disapproval would send the owner into therapy. It's baseless and unjust. I hold Toyota dealerships in the same regard and esteem I hold Wal-Mart, the IRS, and Robbie Harper (who bullied me in third grade).

Why, jkkelley? They tried to fix the brake pulsation, then finally denied its existence after taking a bunch of metal off my brakes. The shops all looked clean, efficient and new, and they did me no good whatsoever. They got poor support from Toyota, which was unwilling to replace defective parts until they had been machined (read: reduced in useful lifespan, in other words, reduced at my ultimate expense).

Took my wife's Toyota to a dealer one time and saw the same attitudes: the styrene smiles of the stupid and dishonest. Took vehicle to them for maintenance and found that they didn't actually do about half of what they said (I dripped candle wax on the valve stems to see if they checked air, I checked the air filter, etc.).

It's just not worth it for a five-figure investment. If it's worth $10K or more to buy a good car, it's worth about a fifth of that to have the maintenance done by real mechanics with real ethics. My experience is that these people suck. I think so, Alex thinks so, the Lightning thinks so.

Do-it-yourself: changing the oil filter is a blind fifteen-minute fumble without their special tool. (That reminds me of the time, with the Corvair, that I lay prostrate along a curb, using bad language, with my head in a growing pool of trannie fluid. Ah, youth.) Haven't tried doing much else myself, but that's probably a sample of what it's like.

Overall: at this point, if you're looking at one of these used, look at the miles. If it's been well maintained, at sixty or thereafter the battery should just be replaced. If it's been in a mild collision, it's probably ok. Based on chats with other owners here and there I'd say it's 150,000 to 200,000 miles in it if well maintained, assuming some major work once around six figures. Just put up with the brake pulsation, which is irritating but not worth trying to make go away.

If you don't want to read a funny story of me making a horse's gluteus of myself early in my ownership of the White Lightning, now is the time to skip down to the ratings and comments.

Glass: I saved this for here. If this truck has PPG glass, it's virtually unbreakable. Here is why--a true story:

It was a hot summer night in north Seattle (Lynnwood/Mountlake Terrace area, actually) in about July 1990. My then-fiancée (and we all know how that turned out) had been looking to me for comfort during an episode of puddly crying in the cab of my new ride. I was in business attire, though I'd gotten rid of the tie.

She still lived with her parents, who co-existed with me in an unspoken compact of more or less unarticulated mutual hatred, so in order to talk we had to go drive someplace other than 'her' house, such as a park. I forget what she was sad about, but at one point I had given her my white dress shirt as a crying and mucous towel. It was warm out, I was going straight home anyway, it wouldn't do me any harm. I was trying to be a Good Guy. (I have since learned to pick my spots a little better.)

Well, about 10:30 she'd pretty well boo-hooed it all out and I took her home without incident. On my way home (about fifty blocks, mostly Seattle freeway), I saw a vehicle stranded by the road with the lights flashing and someone standing there. Didn't look like they were having much fun.

One of my curious obstinacies is that I tend to refuse--and when I refuse, I really refuse--to kowtow to many common frights and fears if it's just my own safety at stake. (I've relented a bit after marriage, in response to pleas from my loving wife.) For example, I never wore a cup to play catcher or third base in baseball; I believed (still do) it made me a better ballplayer. There is no way I would wear a bicycle helmet. I've stepped in front of a lot of oncoming cars that in my estimation of the moment were going too fast in the parking lot, arrogantly staring the driver down as I slowly made my way across the lane.

"jkkelley, I never realized that you were an utter moron." Nah. It's just that I refuse to live in fear, and this is my way of doing it. In any event, this explains why I stopped to help the stranded motorist, who turned out to be a young kid who'd just bought a junker like the '76 Skyhawk: I refuse to not help people just because they 'might have a gun'. Stopping to help people is my choice in life. If it gets me killed someday, oh, well. I don't regard this as noble at all--it's just an insistence on being myself, which is sometimes admirable and often far less than admirable. Award me no medals, for I'll have to hand them back.

Of course, sometimes it has a bad result. I think the sight of a shirtless guy in slacks and dress shoes coming toward him about 11:00 PM along the freeway in pitch darkness made the kid a little nervous--but that's not my fault. My heart was in the right place.

Unfortunately, my keys weren't. I offered him a shoulder-tow to the exit ramp a couple hundred yards away, and he accepted, so I tried to get into the cab of my still-running, lights-on, flashers-on brand new Toyota truck and couldn't. I'd locked my keys in. You can probably guess at the (lack of) character of my commentary at that point.

Ok, so I am an utter moron. I panicked here. At that time in my life, I was spending my spare time playing ice hockey--a sport that builds impressive butt and thigh muscles--and I've always had powerful thighs anyway. I was in much better shape than I am now. What this means is that when I sit on the rear wheelwell in the truck's bed and kick the window with all my might, frankly, that should take the window out. Quickly.

It did nothing of the kind. I kicked the Lightning's rear window about five times, until my foot hurt. Not a crack, nothing. Without a tire iron, I was hosed. Sure, I had a tire wrench. Right behind the seat, sealed inside the cab.

I'd given my fiancée a key when I first purchased it, but was reluctant to phone her. It was late and she needed sleep. So I told the kid to stay and watch the rides while I went and called a tow truck. They'd jimmy my door, they'd tow him, everyone goes home happy. He needed a tow anyway. I innocently set off on a mile-long trot off the exit toward a convenience store, the fitness-conscious professional eccentric out for his evening conditioning run in loafers.

I succeeded in phoning a towing company and made the trot back only to find that the kid, who was probably scarred for life by the episode with the genial madman, had scooted. Little bastard.

(Kids these days, they just don't appreciate anything. When I was their age, outhouses were a novelty and we had to use tree bark for toilet paper because leaves had not been invented--and you listen to me, young lady, we loved every minute of it. We drank from irrigation ditches for fun and public swimming pools for flavour and vitamins. It was all different then. Now all real suffering has been eradicated. Why, if my mother had flashed an ankle on the way to the rock she beat our clothes against for six hours a day, the man in the neighbouring soddy would not even have gotten an erection, we were so proper and moral. And if he had, he'd of been lynched by trampling by my herd of pet woolly rhinoceroses.)

(Yeah. If we didn't behave in school, son, we were branded with hot irons. And we never complained, nosireebob, even when the principal kicked us square in the nuts (ours were tougher) for failing to say 'Jawohl, Herr Kommandant' quickly enough. We had a zest for life that you've completely lost. You should save all your money all your life, live on cheap dog food, suffer in squalid misery until you are 75, and then you'll have enough money to buy a manufactured home and afford a boxy car. Life is all hard work and sacrifice. Your goal in life should be to afford the nursing home and medications, and if you start now, you can.)

Nothing to do but have a seat on the tailgate and wait; it wasn't long at all before a Washington State Patrolman pulled up, stepped out, and turned his flashlight on my eyes, holding it like a bazooka. (These cops are so suspicious.) Blinded for life, I accepted his invitation to brief him on the general situation. Apparently my story was just idiotic enough to be credible, because he did not propose that I accompany him to an institution in which my clarity of thought could be evaluated by kindly people wanting to know 'how does that make you feel?'

Soon another police automobile pulled up with flashing lights. It was a Snohomish County deputy, so the trooper went over to go talk to him (and presumably reassure him that I was not currently deserving of incarceration, commitment or a few tolchocks in the kidneys). I suspect the conversation began with "Hi, Jim, you won't believe what a dork I've got here..."

(Note: this sounds like I'm unjustly picking on the cops. Nothing of the kind. I'm kidding them, but let me drop out of character and say straightfacedly that their behaviour was helpful, their actions were fair and that I'm glad they stopped. I don't even blame the guy for blinding me, and I hope that to this day he gets laughs at Dunkin' Donuts retelling the story. I've had bad cop experiences, but this wasn't one of them in any way, shape or form.)

After a moment the police left and the tow truck pulled up. Unfortunately, he was unable to slim-jim the lock. (Part of me was reassured, I admit--the 5% of my brain that was thinking long-term. Remember, I had to get up at 6 AM to go to work.) Now I was hosed. All I could do was watch helplessly while he kept trying.

Then another pair of headlights pulled over at the Grand Central that this strip of freeway southbound on I-5 near the 220th St. SW exit near Mountlake Terrace had become, with me as the proximate cause. I looked at the license plate and I'll never forget it: Washington, *ACW 501, the old style tags before we put Mt. Rainier or your choice of college or wartime service logo on them. Green on white. The scene began to feel spectral as I realized who it was.

It was a maroon Mustang. My fiancée stepped out.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I intelligently asked.
She looked concerned. "I knew something was wrong, so I just came the way you would go to go home."
Something felt funny in my skin. "Did you call me?" A lack of answer from my home phone would explain much.
"No. I just came."

Too stunned to speak further, I watched while she pulled out the key I'd given her. (Moral? Immediately give your significant other a car key when you buy a new car. Make it your first stop on the way home from the dealer.) The tow truck driver declined to charge me, which was nice of him--although only fair, since he hadn't done me any good.

She followed me home, doubtless to make sure I didn't do anything else too stupid that evening. I'd had a big night; I probably aged five years.

I learned two things:

1) I don't care what James Randi, Cecil Adams, or the whole goddamned staff of Skeptic magazine say. There is something to all that stuff about telepathic phenomena. I don't know what it is, how to explain it, or how far it goes--but to believe that it's total baloney would be unscientific for me. The evidence suggests that it's not.

2) Toyota auto glass, at least on this car (made by PPG), is something you can rely on. Take my word.

* I have muddled the license number in case she still owns it. The relationship ended badly, but I'm not that type. One of her parents is still living, and that's punishment enough for her.

Amount Paid (US$): 10200
Condition: New
Model Year: 1990
Model and Options: 22 R-E engine, 4 cyl, no extra features, nothing else interesting