The best cars I’ve ever owned

My brother is turning 60 next month. Cars have always been an important part of his life. When we were kids, we spent every September visiting the car dealers on Reseda Boulevard collecting brochures for all the new year’s models. He turned his passion into a career. His website and YouTube channel is named Victory & Reseda after the neighborhood where we grew up and the gas stations on the corner where our parents fueled, maintained, and upgraded their cars. Happy birthday, Randy!

In honor of his birthday, I’d like to talk about the best cars I’ve ever owned. (This is counter to The worst cars I’ve ever owned post I did in 2017.) None of these have won his prestigious Vehicle of the Year Award. (Last year’s winner is the Ford Maverick.) But we’ve always had different tastes in cars.

1984 Honda Civic hatchback

When I got the job at AST in 1986, I had to commute from Reseda to Irvine, which was 120 miles (193.1 km) round-trip. My 1979 Mazda 626 took only one of those drives and died. I needed a dependable, affordable, and gas-sipping car quick, and I found it in a 1984 Honda Civic hatchback. The car handled four months of commuting along with everything else I threw at it. That included four moves, trips to San Francisco and Las Vegas, and weekend trips to Garden Grove to help my mom. With the exception of a botched brake job…