Cars - Chapter eight 1993 Jeep Cherokee

This is one of my two company cars, but I though I would include it anyway.

This is the only photo of the car that I have:

From Cars

That is it to the right of the photo. You may be able to tell from the picture that I was not living in the US at the time I owned that photo. I was in Venezuela. The gentleman in the photo is a good friend - he was a retired Colonel of Artillery in the Venezuelan Army. The picture was taken on the way to his finca at San Juan de los Moros:


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It was always fun riding with the Colonel. He had, of course, his military ID with him at all times, as well as his 9mm automatic. When we would come to a military checkpoint (of which there were many in Venezuela) he would let the soldier swagger up to my window and ask me what I was doing, and where I was going. He would then lean over me with his ID in his hand. The soldier would immediately snap to attention and wave me through with a very deferential "Sigue, sigue, me coronel!"

That car was OK. Called a "mafioneta" in Caracas as it was well liked by the drug dealers in the country, it was an often stolen car. Someone tried to steal this car too, but they were not successful. But they did ream both locks out with what I assume was a screwdriver. The only way to open the car was with the remote control.

These cars were stolen so frequently, I had to have secondary anti-theft devices in the car. I had two - a "tranca palanca" and a "tranca pedal". The first one locked the shift knob (it was a five speed manual transmission) to a piece of angle iron welded to the floor board. The second was a device that locked the brake to the clutch pedal. That way, you could not depress either. We had these two locks installed by different shops, because I was told that if you had them both installed by the same shop, they would keep the keys and then steal the car if they happened across it in the street.

I loved driving in Venezuela - it was really survival of the fittest. Once, I had two folks down from our Houston office. The guy the back kept having a sharp intake of breath as we would come close to other cars. The fellow in the front seat said, "You should just close your eyes when Dan drives. It is safer that way." I replied "Yes, that is how I manage to get by in this city"

I never even had a fender bender.