It stinks so much I can't look at it without smashing the toe of my boot into its quarter panel, so now it looks like a soup can used for target practice.

        Sometimes, it starts. Sometimes, it doesn't. There is no logic to this.

        Once, this car was Best Ever. They all were. All new cars are better than the previous year's model, which makes you wonder why the previous year's model wasn't any better than it was.

        Do the car companies stockpile improvements, then dole them out a few each year? If the legroom on the 2002 is so fabulous, who drove the same model in '98? Gnomes?

        This car has a dome light that stopped working four years ago. The company wanted $300 to fix it. Uh-huh. For $300, I want a chandelier.

        It has one of those all-in-one consoles between the two front seats. Heat, AC, radio, tape player, ejector-seat button for ungrateful children. Anyway, the tape player went bad, started eating tapes, so I ripped it out with a large screwdriver. Incredibly, it kept running, like the headless horseman or something.

        Feeling that a broken, running tape player was a worthless object, a drain on the battery and a senseless contradiction, I jammed the screwdriver in a few more times until I killed the tape player dead. Replacing the defective tape player required replacing the entire console. Seven-hundred bucks, with labor.

        The car stinks.

        The new console didn't make the car start. Neither did a tuneup. Neither has anything this side of voodoo and boot-kicks to the quarter panel.

        Sometimes it starts. Sometimes, I kick it.

        The last good car I owned was a '65 Mustang, 25 years ago. After that, I had a Chevette and got married. What happens when you get married is, your wife gets the new car and you get her old one, the former Best Ever with the gnome legroom. This happens again and again.

        She got the Malibu, I got the Chevette. She got the Civic, I kept the Chevette. She got the new Civic, I got the old one. She got the Accord, I got the old-new Civic.

        She's getting the Avalon. I got the car I got now. Which stinks.

        This time, I'm putting my foot down, and hoping it doesn't go through the floorboard. I want a sporty, two-door, mid-sized coupe. No sedan for this boy. A coupe. A Koo-Pay.

        She is angry that it will have just two doors. What about getting out of the back seat? Not my problem, I say.

        It's time I had a nice car.

        I will be looking soon. Shopping for a car is like grading a road with your tongue. The only thing worse than driving a car that stinks is looking for one that doesn't.

        Always, I have bought cars in a rush of crazed desperation. The old one died. I had as much leverage as a man on a cliff, facing a firing squad. Not this time. I want a car, which is different from needing one. I want an island off the Irish coast, too. And a toaster that works.

        The current car may stink but it's alive. So unlike the previous trips to the showroom, I will not be worked over like a bad heavyweight.

        For the next few weeks, this space will be filled with car-buying adventures by me. This time will be different. No slick salesman is going to whack me with charm.

        “Give me a car that doesn't stink,” I will say. If you leave to speak with your manager, even once, I walk. I'll get in my car and take my business elsewhere.

        If my car starts. Which is a crapshoot.

        Contact Paul Daugherty by phone: 768-8454; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.

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