We had inherited an old 1976 Ford Granada from my in-laws back in the day. Granada means either grenade, or pomegranate in Spanish. I don’t know if that’s germane, but I wanted to point it out. I believe the name was meant to evoke the old-world, stylish grandeur of the Spanish city, with its ornate Moorish influences. The car was a little past the days of grandeur by the time we got it, but we didn’t have much money and this was a freebie, so, uh, the price was right. It wasn’t a great car but it did work and we were in no position to refuse it.  

We had had it for a few years, and at one point we were driving on a rainy day when another car ran through a red light and t-boned us. It didn’t do too much damage; smashed in the passenger side front door a bit, but other than that it was drivable. Unfortunately for us, the other driver was uninsured. She said she knew a guy that owned a body shop and might be able to fix it for us off the books if we wouldn’t report it to our insurance, but that smelled like a bad deal to me. We did report it to our insurance, one of these cut-rate shops that will give you “insurance”… well, they’ll give you an insurance card that fulfills the legal requirements of ‘having insurance’, but if you ever actually need the “insurance” part of the insurance, don’t expect much. And sure enough, they give us a line: sorry, your payment was a day late, and so for that day, you didn’t have insurance so we won’t cover your car. What a bunch of… 

Anyway, as I said, the car was drivable, so we just ate it and drove around in an ugly car. 

A little later, we decide it’s time to get a new car. By which I mean new to us, not “new” new. So a used car. Alright, we’re all on the same page now. 

So the Granada, not being in the greatest shape, is left at home while we borrow another car from my in-laws to go car shopping. Just down the street from our house, we roll into a dealership and find a car that we aren’t a hundred percent sold on, but we like it well enough. It’s older than we had wanted, but if they’d give it to us for 5k, we’d take it. We haggled back and forth with the sales weasels and we were frankly willing to walk away from the entire deal since it wasn’t really what we wanted, but would be acceptable for the 5k. They tried and tried to get us to pay a little more, but eventually, waaay after closing hours, we reached a deal: They’d give us the car for 5k and take the Granada as a trade-in for $500.  

Since we had used the other car for shopping, I promised to go home, get the Granada, and we could complete the deal. So I get the Granada and drive it to the dealership, and, as God is my witness, the second I drove it over the apron and into the dealership parking lot, the radiator blew up.  

So I park it in one of the spots and go in and tell the salesman that the car is out in the lot. He comes out to take a look and what does he see? Our butt-ugly Granada; passenger door caved in from the T-bone, the radiator smoking, and that rainbow-colored radiator liquid flowing from underneath the car.  

The salesman walks around the car, looks at me… looks back at the car, looks at me again and says: You and I both know that’s not worth 500 bucks. I replied: maybe not, but you said you’d give us 500 for it. 

He just shakes his head and says ok. We got our new (used) car that night. 

About a month and half later, we get a notice from the Long Beach police telling us we need to collect the Granada from impound. I’m guessing the dealership paid someone to “just get rid of it”, which was done by abandoning it on the streets of Long Beach. We told the city we had sold it and it was no longer ours.  

And that was that.