![\"tree](\"https:\/\/giuliettas.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/09\/tree-sprint.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIt’s like a half remembered dream. \u00a0This is pre-Rufus by a good 7 years. \u00a0A lot of my personal history in one picture.<\/strong><\/p>\n Someone \u2013a real person who may or may not still be alive, walked into a dealership, smiled at an attractive greeter, chatted with an enthusiastic sports car salesman (hopefully in a plaid coat), walked onto the showroom floor and looked under the hood of 20379.\u00a0 A big glass door was opened and this Sprint was driven around on a test drive, an hour and a half later this guy decided to take it home.\u00a0 The first 50,000 miles flew by like so many rows of almond trees along the side of the highway, watched by a child from the passenger seat, sweeping out their strange geometries.<\/p>\n Years passed, a newer car replaced the Sprint as daily driver, and one day, through lack of use or neglected maintenance the Sprint was rendered immobile, by a flat tire, a bad condenser or cracked brake line perhaps.\u00a0 Years became decades and the detritus of life piled up on and around the Sprint in its garage abode, until an enthusiastic neighborhood teenager asked about the car hiding under the pile of stuff too precious to throw away, but not too precious to let decay.<\/p>\n The original owner told the teenager he\u2019d give it some thought.\u00a0 The following weekend he enlisted the help of the teenager to exhume the Sprint and take a load of once precious stuff, now too decayed to be considered non-garbage to the dump.\u00a0 They wash the car, air up the tires, evict some pests and see what it needs.\u00a0 The acid in the battery did the trunk floor no favors and one of the wheels is locked tight.\u00a0 The original owner thinks of all the great times he had in it, but admits to himself he will never get this car back on the road and agrees to sell it for the price of a few lawn mows to the teen.<\/p>\n The teen gets the car on the road and it enjoys a new life for a few years before the teen is no longer a teen, but a young father, and once again the Sprint is left idle in a garage.\u00a0 The story repeats, variations on a theme until it falls into my hands with a transplanted 1750 engine and a fresh trunk floor.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s the short version. \u00a0I know I have data to support a few bits of that story!<\/p>\n I do around 30,000 miles with the transplanted engine before rebuilding and installing the original, do another 50,000 miles with the original before getting it rebuilt again.\u00a0 It\u2019s currently sitting in a garage in Oakland California, wearing 4 coats of poorly applied paint, 57 years\u00a0after being ore in a hole under a mountain.<\/p>\n I drove it around on Sunday morning. \u00a0I had a great time. \u00a0Rufus thinks it’s pretty cool. \u00a0I believe I’m\u00a0still be in the early part of this Sprints story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The post about VINs and years and all got me thinking about the real history of these cars. \u00a0History, in the collective sense, is a view from a perspective, a mix of what appears to have happened (or what you are told happened), and small pieces of hard information; data that modifies this general history … <\/p>\n