And when two wheels aren't enough...

The Ducati is my second vehicle. As much as I’d like to be the perpetual rock star, all Joe Rocket and dark visors, I cannot escape my true destiny. My primary mode of transportation? Let me tell you a story…
Two women…blonds…pulled up next to us in their little red convertible. They laughed and danced to the house music that beat-beat-beat from their woofers. They were all teeth, toes and…well, you know.

Lee is a friend and co-worker who was sitting next to me, jabbing his elbow into my shoulder. “Whoa…look at this!”

I gripped the wheel tight with both hands, gritting my teeth, wishing this god-awful light would just go green. Just get me to Taco Bell, damn it.
“Are you hearin’ me, man? You’ve gotta see this!” he said, still jabbing.
“I’m not lookin’” I sneered.
“What? Why!?” he said, flirting and winking out the passenger window. Was it because we were both happily married? Was it because I prefer red heads? No and (I love you, Baby!) no. “What’s with you!?”
“We’re in a mini-van.” I said, scowling.
Now, Lee is slick. Cooler than cool. But powerless in the grip of domesticated transportation. I hate that van.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t change the fact that the 1998 Pontiac Trans Sport is the greatest road going vehicle ever created.

Yeah, I said it.

It is close to vehicular perfection. Every enthusiast reading this is, at this point, is calling me four letter, hyphenated names. Tell you what, you name the greatest road going vehicle, and the Trans Sport has it beat. Yes, I’m serious.

It seats 7 passengers. That’s a boring start. But it also get’s a combined 24mpg while it’s hauling said extended family. Those are stats that some brand new vehicles aspire to.
It’s hauled wood for me. Vacuum up bark crumbs and repeat.
I brought a refrigerator home in it. Yeah, a major appliance. Who needs a half ton?
Pull the seats out on a cold October night in Michigan, blow up an air mattress in it, and you’ve got an instant insulated camper.
Later, when we starting taking camping more seriously, we bought a pop-up camper and now I pull it with the van. Towing package? We don’t need no stinking towing package!
When my job relocated me, it towed a trailer crammed with two motorcycles and half a household through the Appalachian Mountains!
Oh, and it’s great in the snow. I mean, in 11 years, it’s never even been stuck in lake effect accumulation. It just pulls itself through whatever you throw at it. I own a Volvo Cross Country and have a hard time justifying the AWD because the damned Trans Sport works so well!

It’s got 137,000 miles at the time of this writing, and all I’ve ever done to it is replaced a front drivers side wheel bearing and kept the van full of fluids. I’ve always made sure it had good shocks, good brakes, and good tires. The rest seems to take care of itself.
Oh sure, it has its quirks.

I hate the name. Trans Sport is a lame play on words. Later they called in the Montana…also dumb. Olds called theirs the Silhouette, which is funny because the shadow of this thing looks like pointed brick. Chevy called their version the Venture. I guess that’s more appropriate.

Other quirks? I believe GM decided to spray every plastic fascia they produced with PAM cooking spray before they painted them. The painted plastic on GM bumpers peels like an albino on the equator. The driver’s side door speaker is shot. The radio randomly blinks what seem to be digitally coded messages rather than a station number. And the power windows moan like old dogs every time I roll them up after I stop at a Burger King window. Also, the air conditioning stopped working this year along with the rear wiper.

But…

Under the peeling fascia is black plastic that doesn’t rust. Three working speakers out of four isn’t bad. I don’t need to see the radio numbers. My presets have been set for years. When the power windows quit completely, it’ll force me to stop eating at fast food drive-through’s, and the AC quitting happened during the coolest Michigan July in history! Oh, and who needs a wiper for a vertical window anyway!?
So even when it’s broke, it isn’t really broke.

I have no facts to back this up, but there have got to be more dark blue and pewter Pontiac Trans Sports on the road than the single make and color of any other car. Maybe they’re just more noticeable than blue Taurus’s…I don’t know. But it seems like there’s one in every parking lot and on every stretch of road. A testament to their durability.
Performance? It wheezes out a little on top, but it’s pretty agile in stoplight to stoplight driving. It’s certainly faster than that stupid kid’s fast and furious Kia (you know the one), all ground effects and no motor.

So, it’s Achilles heel?

You can’t be…No, scratch that…Nobody can be cool in one. Think of Johnny Depp in a ’98 Trans Sport.
See what I mean?
So when I strap myself into in my mini-van, it’s sort of ego crushing. The best impression that it gives other people is…um…that you like to breed? But, you know what? It’s taken my wife and friends wine tasting on the Old Mission Peninsula. It’s been on thousand mile trips countless times and has always gotten us there safe. It’s been the taxi to the ice cream shop, packed with laughing little girls and a wife I adore.

I want to sell it. I want to SO BAD.

So that inferno orange metallic Camaro RS, the one that calls to me in my sleep, the one with a 300hp V6 and 19” factory wheels, the one that flexes its muscle and growls and snarls before you even turn it on…it’ll have to wait. Why?

The van is paid for.