the county gremlin

As I've mentioned before, I'm not much into driving - I've just never cared for it. And I especially paid the price for not knowing yet how to drive stick when I worked a sort of internship in my early twenties.

During my college years, I applied to work in the university's 'co-op' work-study program after my junior year. It was a job with the Sacramento County public works department. Although it ultimately wasn't that applicable to my engineering studies, it was still a valuable experience. Occasionally, I'd have to run errands which required some driving around the city. Instead of having to drive my own car, the city had a car pool with a variety of vehicles to sign out with. And as you can imagine, the fleet was comprised of the more affordable vehicles that were available at the time. I seem to recall Chevettes perhaps? Which wouldn't have been so bad if only I knew how to drive stick shift. No, the model that was available for automatic-only drivers like me was the AMC Gremlin.

Not a big car, yet it drove like a tank. That was really my greatest concern, the handling (or lack thereof); good thing, seriously, I wasn't embarrassed being seen driving one of those things - come to think of it, I'm more embarrassed now. What a sight! This was sometime in the mid-eighties.