And yet I still get a huge kick out of seeing this car. It's certainly because it was the car my dad was driving around the time I got my driver's licence. It was a maroon 4-door Reliant (at least I think it was a Reliant... maybe it was an Aries?!) with front buckets seats (which was quite rare) and a 3-speed automatic transmission (with shifter on the column). There's not much else to tell you about it... it had power brakes and steering, an AM/FM radio with cassette player and two speakers, a change holder, and a cigarette lighter. Pretty pitiful list of features. But when you're 16 and have your freshly laminated driver's licence in your hand, you don't care. It was economical and reliable, and got me where I wanted to go.
Another laugh was the time a friend and I had pulled off the road into a farmers field to listen to some music. This was a common, innocent ritual for Ottawa Valley teenagers, and usually we'd listen to a few favourite songs (my best guess it was 'Spirit of the West'), drink a 'Jolt' Cola, and be on our way. That particular time we listened a little too long, because the battery died and we were unable to restart the car. We waited out by the road and flagged down a car to ask for a boost. Instead of keeping my mouth shut and simply asking for help, as my friend suggested, I started in on a long and convoluted story to explain how we had ended up parked in a field with a dead battery. The people who stopped to help us were older guys we recognized from high school, and my friend was mortified when she saw that they weren't buying my story and assumed something much less innocent than listening to the radio had been going on...
One last memory goes back to a time I was working part-time at a tire repair shop. I noticed one day that the owner had an old worn pair of tires the right diameter for the K-Car, but much wider. I thought about how cool it would look with wide tires in the back, and my dad agreed to let me put them on. I installed them on the rims and balanced them myself, and bolted them onto the car. Proud of my work, I headed home at the end of the day to show my dad. It was wintertime, and there was a little bit of snow on the ground. In the very first corner (no exaggeration here, it really was the first corner I came to!) I turned right, and the rear end went sliding out. I spun around and ended up backwards in the ditch. As I had been wearing my seatbelt I wasn't hurt, though I did feel like a complete idiot, and hung my head in shame when I called my dad from the nearest house and asked him to send a tow truck. He came to see what I had done, and was laughing despite himself. One "Glad you're not hurt", after that a "That's what happens when you drive too fast with bald tires in the snow" followed with a "Lesson learned" was all I ever heard about the matter...
I only have one photo, or partial photo, of our old K-Car. You can't see much, just the rear end and the dark maroon colour, because some dorky 16 year old is blocking the view...