Vive El Feo, “Long Live the Ugly One”

I don’t advocate name calling, but our latest acquisition was begging for it. We decided that a car would help the efficiency of our work and be something of a safety net in an unwelcome emergency. Colleen’s criteria was air conditioning (very necessary in the city unless you want black diesel dust boogers) and my criteria was four-wheel drive (otherwise we still couldn’t get anywhere close to our house.) El Feo is an ´86 Mitsubishi Montero whose owner, an old Ecuadorian man, vowed sincerely that he couldn’t bear to get rid of the car, but his grown children were mistreating it and his leaky roof needed replacement. After several redundant office visits and 1 full day of bureaucratic nonsense, Nick and I were cruising out to the countryside, title in hand and the shrunken head still hanging in the rear window (really). El Feo has custom wiring. For instance, the bright/dim switch is of the old foot-operated style, yet is located about 12 inches under and left of the steering wheel next to 2 custom switches for the headlights and instrument panel lights. This means two things. 1) If the road is bumpy (most are) and your seatbelt locks, you cannot reach it. 2) If you miss the switch ever so slightly, you disable all the cars lights at full speed and terrify the family you’re hauling back from nighttime church service. Also, the electric locks function… at will… so the spare keys have come in handy. El Feo has very special fuel injectors such that any application of the throttle beyond the most gentle will shroud would-be pursuers in an impenetrable screen of black smoke (hoping to fix that soon). We’ve got 850 miles together under our belt and continue to burn more diesel than oil. I don’t like red cars, but this one is growing on me.