Story Notes: Vehicle...Allegedly · 4:53am March 16th
Source: https://derpibooru.org/images/165139
For the first time in the decade+ I've been on here, I'm using a car photo for cover art that I didn't personally take.
I haven't seen the car in question. It belongs to Hearsesrock427, as does the photo. I want to preface this by saying Hearsesrock427 has 100% endorsed this fanfic. I made him aware of it in advance, and he signed off on it.
Hearse has a fleet of land yachts, primarily on the Ford Panther platform (Ford Crown Victoria, Lincoln Town Car, and Mercury Grand Marquis).
He picked this car up for a song with the intent of restomodding it. It was a two-for-$1,000 deal with a '94 Lincoln Town Car that he was less excited about (but is in much, much better condition and worth the money all by itself; so it was still a good deal). This story exists because I felt a need to mock this car mercilessly. Not to be malicious, but as a warning. I've been there and wanted him to learn from my mistakes. This is a car he inadvertently poked a hole through one of the doors because of rust. I can't emphasize enough just how awful the condition of the car is overall. This isn't a dig at Ford, Lincoln, or even the Mark VI. The Mark VI also rides on the Panther platform, as does my daily driver. There's nothing wrong with the Mark VI in general, but there's a lot of things wrong with his example. All of them can be attributed to a combination of road salt and neglect.
I've had my own money pit project car, a 1982 Mustang that I finally sold last November after it not having moved under its own power since 2016 (canonically, my former '82 belongs to Razzaroo in my Car Wash series). I paid $1,000 (and didn't get another car thrown in) for it and sank significantly more into it than that. Yet in all the time I owned it I only managed to get a whopping 7,500 miles out of it. Multiple times it spent years at a shop waiting for a mechanic to work on it.
I finally gave up on it. I hated to do it but I'm not going to be one of those guys who says 'I'm gonna restore it someday' while the car rots. The last shop has had it since 2020 and hasn't done anything with it other than move it around their lot. One of their mechanics eventually bought it from me.
Hearse is stubborn and it took a cost/benefit analysis for him to realize what needs to be done with this car. I pointed out that for the cost he's going to put into making that wreck drivable he could just buy two that are already in good shape.
It's why I slightly expanded the villain ending here to get to the minimum 1,000-word count for FimFiction. I toyed with writing a 'hero' ending where Lulu restores the car but that really isn't the heroic thing to do in this situation. It takes a lot of money to restore a car. Hearse is already restoring other cars. The earliest he planned to have anything done with this car was 2027. All while paying storage on it. I also want to emphasize that my characterization of Lulu Luck isn't based on him at all.
Sometimes you have to admit when you're in over your head.
Oddly enough, even though it covered less distance overall, it's not the worst car I've ever owned. That honor goes to an Eagle Talon. That clunker blew two head gaskets, the transmission, the AC, and the radio. I'll pause here while those of you who've read anything in my self-insert Car Wash series ponder that last one. Air Supply is my favorite my band and I hate 'loud' in general. Let's just say this remains the only piece of stereo equipment I've ever had go out on me.
Source: https://derpibooru.org/images/1081578
There's not much art of Lulu, and I lucked out that the above image has the perfect expression for this story. This wasn't planned - of the characters from the 16 universe, Lulu's the only one I could see taking on this particular project. As far as I can tell, this may be the only transparent image of her available online.
For much the same reason these ponies star in the Business Trip series, I wanted to use these toy-only characters in stories for the app. With the limited time I had available, I had to stick to the ones I'd established personalities for, and even then they didn't all get individual stories. With more time, well, there's no shortage of previous generation ponies and/or toy-only characters. I could've kept going indefinitely.
Of note, this short inspired a sequel: In With A Bang
Source: https://derpibooru.org/images/165135
It doesn't matter which ending you pick, either way the car's getting destroyed. The chaos option lets it go out with a little dignity. The villain option, well... I'm just gonna leave this here:
