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I got it in Mexico, from a guy named Vicente, for two wrinkled ten dollar bills, after about five tequila shots. He said the car was muy caliente, but I'll tell you this: six months from then, sitting in that two-door marvel of the seventies, in the middle of January, fifty miles outside of St. Paul, Minnesota, I wasn't feeling particularly "hot." The starter and the battery were dead; I sat there alone, with no heat, wearing my "Cancun" golf shirt. I had an expired granola bar in the glove compartment. It was three in the morning. I made it though... The Gremlin was true to its name from then on. Soon, the guys at Goodyear knew me and my degenerate car better than their own families. Sometimes I felt like this thing wasn't meant to run by itself. Perhaps, I thought, it should be driven by horses, or dogs, like a sled. Three years and two thousand dollars later, I sold it to a guy nick-named Turbo, at some run-down bar in Oneida. He was doing shots of Jack Daniels. As I took the ten dollar bill from his shaky hand, I remembered Cancun. Vicente, are you still there?