To Infiniti & Beyond

Prologue

When I was fifteen, I watched the Fast and the Furious for the first time. Don't get me wrong, I've always been into cars - after all, I did grow up around them (it happens when your dad tinkers with anything that's got an engine in it, your uncle is an auto body mechanic, your cousin is a race car driver, and your uncle and dad owned motorcycles for the first half of your life) I was always in the shop - but the movies ignited a deeper passion.

I begged my dad to buy me a manual Mitsubishi Eclipse that I'd work on paying him back for up until getting my license at seventeen - this way I could also learn how to work on cars as I modded and maintained it. Every plea and ounce of research I dumped into my argument was ignored.

The month before I turned 17, he surprised me with an early 2000's Subaru Legacy. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful to have a car, I just wish it was what I wanted. By the time all the mechanical work to get it safely drivable and back to being reliable was done, we were five grand deep. A sound Mitsubishi Eclipse with lower miles than the Subaru had during the time I had been looking cost an average of $3.8k. To top it all off, the deal was I had to pay for half. I'm sure you can see where my frustration lies.

A year and some months later, my dad called me drunk and rambling on about how I was not to bring my car to my mom's boyfriend's shop for maintenance. I pleaded with him to stop, that he was making a big deal out of nothing. At this point in the argument, he had only been assuming. I begged him to talk about it when he was sober. He refused, he told me that he was disgusted with me for letting "that idiot" touch my car. He held the fact that he purchased the car over my head, that I was to only bring it to him for maintenance as it was his money (even though I had already paid him back my half of the deal). He told me my car was no longer welcome on his property.

At that point I hung up in tears and was completely distraught. He proceeded to bombard me with calls, when he realized I wasn't going to answer his calls, the texts started. He called me ungrateful. He called me disrespectful. He then threatened to turn my phone off.

The following day, I decided to cut contact with him. He had mentally abused me for years after my mom divorced him, it had just taken me this long to finally stop putting up with it and realize why she had left.

When December rolled around, it was the happiest I had been in months. My mom supported my search for a new car - one I could modify and explore my passion with.

We looked at Mitsubishi Lancers, Infiniti g35's, Mitsubishi 3000gt's. Then the stars aligned. A customer had come into my mom's boyfriend's mechanic shop and he was looking to sell his car to the right buyer. He was in a pinch and needed the cash quickly, resulting in my purchase of my beautiful, blacked out, automatic, rear wheel drive, 2015 Infiniti Q60 coupe.