In the mid-90s, I drove a stick-shift 1987 red Toyota Celica.
I bought it right after I got my first permanent job out of college, and I was psyched. This was by far the best car I had ever owned. It replaced a 1984 Chevy Chevette. I loved this car – stick shift, more power than any previous car I had owned (only 116 HP, but my Chevette had 65 HP), power windows, and sporty (for the time).
Although I loved it, it had a myriad of annoying little problems over the several years that I owned it. For example, it perpetually winked at oncoming traffic because one pop-up headlight stayed stuck in the up position while the other stayed down. The headliner fabric drooped down on the driver’s head, requiring your raised right hand to hold it up in between using your right hand to change gears. The air conditioner was a crapshoot, as were the power windows. The most annoying, however, was the engine had trouble in the rain. I never figured that out. Sometimes it was fine, and sometimes it would spit and sputter.
But it also had a couple of major problems that taught me a lot about how systems in the world work. Although trying at the time, these were critical lessons that have served me well.
What follows over the next couple of days are the lessons I learned from my 1987 Celica.
