This page is dedicated to my 1987 Buick Century, which was been my trustworthy companion for the first year after I first got my
driver's license. This car first entered into our family in 1989 when my parents bought it at Spaulding Motors in Bemidji,
Minnesota. After serving my parents faithfully for 9 years, the car was looking pretty rough so my mom bought a a different one.
The Beast (which is now its nickname) was parked at my grandma's (now my parents' ) house and was to be given to me on
my 16th birthday. When that birthday rolled around in 1998 I became the proud owner of my first car, that '87 Buick Century
Custom.
The Beast was a 4 door Century with the 2.5L (Iron Duke) Tech4 TBI engine and a 3 speed automatic transmission.It was quite
a unique looking machine; it was painted 4 different colors, had a cracked windshield, and all the silver stripping was gone off
the exterior. Despite all its problems (broken AC, leaking oil, broken power steering pump, etc), I absolutely loved it and sank
quite a bit of money into it, fixing some of the mechanical problems it had and installing a semi-expensive stereo system; The
car was fun, mainly because I didn't have to worry about fucking it up... the only thing that worked well in the whole thing was the
engine.
After about a year of hard driving, the car quit one October night (the same day that William's Celebrity burned a hole through a
piston, ironically) at Bryan and Matthew's house. We pushed all the way home in the dark that night, and there it sat, dead. After
a quick examination, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it (I had very little mechanical knowledge back in the day) and
went in search of a new car. In November I got my 1994 Chevy Beretta, which was my daily driver for the next few years.
About a week after that, my dad checked out the Buick thoroughly and found the only problem was a burned power lead; the
problem was quickly remedied thereafter.
We then put it for sale (which was painful) but didn't wind up selling it... I can't blame anyone who looked at that poor thing for
not wanting to buy it. I think the only thing holding it together was the spray paint.
The end of the Beast's saga came when my cousin's car got thrashed in a hail storm down in Danville. My mom gave the Beast
to her to use until she got a new car. That was the last I ever saw of it, it's probably sitting in the junkyard or crushed into a cube
now.