When I was offered my first newspaper job, at a little afternoon paper in
I had to have a car.
A car?
I'd been living happily on a bicycle. The last thing I wanted was a car or the payment that came with it.
But I wanted the job, so I bicycled over to a used car lot, checked out the options and settled on the best vehicle I could afford with my new paycheck, a slightly battered white 1979 Honda Civic.
"You'll need a
I biked home, called an old high school friend, said, "Can I borrow
The starter car, like the starter house, is the one that proves you're an adult. It's not fancy but it's plenty, a humble car that makes you proud.
A starter car may be a hand-me-down from an older sibling or a gift from parents, but for some of us it's the fruit of our own hard work, maybe the first thing of value we can buy with our own money.
Nothing like your very own loan coupon booklet to make you feel grown up.
My Honda Civic had two doors (who needed more?); a stick shift (why would you drive any other kind?); no air conditioning (AC was for wimps); a cassette player (luxury!); and hand-cranked windows.
For the next few years, I roamed the world in that little car, which I called "the tin can."
"You're driving the tin can all the way to
The tin can and I, just the two of us, motored the vast breadth of the continent, down to L.A., across
After a long relationship with the Civic, I upgraded to a roomier, air-conditioned car, but of all the cars I've owned, the tin can remains closest to my heart.
And to this day, when I hear the words "Honda Civic," it's what I see: a simple car, all function and no frills, a car that would never make anyone swoon.
Well, that's not what "Honda Civic" means anymore.
You know how it feels when that scrawny guy you dated then dumped for someone flashier suddenly shows up again? Only now he's swaggering around with bulbous biceps and gleaming teeth, surrounded by a giddy entourage?
I don't know how that feels either, but it's got to be a lot like how I felt when I saw the news the other day about the new Honda Civic Type R.
The photos were everywhere for a day or two: a sporty car, in an eye-popping acid-green, dubbed by one reviewer "the fastest and most powerful front-wheel-drive hot hatchback in existence."
"Badass," said another.
Holy Batmobile. That's a Civic? It's not even in the same gene pool as my starter car.
When I ask other people of my vintage about their starter cars, they often name cars that have gone extinct. The Chevy Vega. The Plymouth Duster. The Ford Escort.
Those humble cars, unlike the Civic, died before they morphed into something bearing no resemblance to their ancestors.
I realize that in the years since I owned my starter car, the mild-mannered Civic has gone through several metamorphoses.
I even owned one of the mutations, an early Honda Civic hybrid, a giant compared to the tin can, though the only badass thing about it was its stick shift, which impressed the 18-year-old car dealership employee who drove it home with me.
"You drive a stick?" he said. "That's hot."
He didn't mean I was hot, but, like, girls his age who drove a stick totally were, you know?
I will never be hot enough for the new Honda Civic Type R, that's for sure, but, having recovered from my shock, I'm grateful to learn about its existence, if only because it gave me a chance to remember the first car I loved. Maybe it will give you pause to remember yours.
And one day, circa 2025, a freshly employed college grad just might find a battered Civic Type R on a used car lot and think, "Perfect starter car."
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Mary Schmich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune.