Somebody avenge this Avenger, please!

Yesterday marked two years since a Tornado swept through North Minneapolis and dropped a tree on my house.  This means that as of today, I could make another claim on my homeowner’s insurance without having to worry about my insurance company dropping me -at least according to a letter they sent out to me shortly after I filed my claim two years ago saying that if I had another claim within 24 months, I was toast.  It seemed odd to me at the time, because I had never made any type of claim on my insurance before that tornado, yet there I was, holding a letter threatening to drop me from my policy.  I talked to my agent about it, and she assured me that it was just a form letter that my insurance company sends out to everybody just to make sure that their customer base feels alienated and unhappy at all times, apparently. 

On to today’s car, which, if it was insured for more than just liability coverage, was probably totaled by its insurance company after that same tornado.  This photo is of a demolished Dodge Avenger that I spotted two years ago today, when I went out with the volunteer clean up crews the day after the tornado to help clear some of the devastation.

An Avenger is one who takes vengeance or exacts revenge.  Vengeance is defined by the dictionary app on my Ipad as the “infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or the like, on a person by another who has been harmed by that person.”  It’s a pretty tough sounding name for a car that doesn’t look like it’s in any kind of shape to take out revenge upon the tree that smooshed it… Unless looking damaged and forlorn on the side of the road counts as vengeance.  Of course, some people say the best revenge is a life well lived.  That won’t work either, it seems, because as automotive lives go, this Avenger will be living out its time in a scrap yard, and was probably crushed into a little cube of metal over a year ago. 

This Avenger was of the generation of Dodge Avengers that were produced and sold from 1995-2000.  Sold only as coupes, they were available with a 2.0L in line 4 cylinder that made 140 HP and 130 lb ft of torque, or a 2.5L V6 that made 155 HP and 161 lb ft of torque.  I’ve never driven an Avenger, but I have driven an early 2000’s model Dodge Stratus R/T coupe with a turbo charged 2.4L 4 cylinder, which is a later incarnation of the Dodge Avenger.  It was one that was taken in on trade back when I was in the car business, and it came in with the clutch all mucked up and needing to be replaced as a result of being owned by some kid who didn’t know how to handle a manual transmission.  It seems like these cars just can’t catch a break no matter what they call themselves.

I’ve only known one person who owned a Dodge Avenger of this generation, and that was my sister’s freshman year college roommate; a sorority girl whose folks bought her a brand new Avenger for high school graduation back in ‘95, in red just like this smooshed one, even.  That car didn’t have a very good life either. 

I recall my sister telling me of a time when her roommate had gotten herself extremely intoxicated at a frat party, where she had managed to be standing in just the wrong place under the balcony from which several fraternity boys were urinating onto the ground (and the sorority girl) below.  Soaked in nasty frat boy pee, and too drunk to stumble back to the dorms on her own, she ended up calling my sister to give her a ride.  My sister, who didn’t have a car at college with her then, dutifully drove out in the shiny new red Avenger to rescue her drunken roommate. 

Because it wasn’t bad enough to transfer frat boy urine onto the upholstery of her new car, the roommate proceeded to be sick all over the interior, as well as the exterior of the passenger side door after she figured out how to roll down the window and stick her head out instead of vomiting on the dashboard and floor.  It was a disgusting mess, to be sure, and one that my sister, who had already been woken from her sleep at an ungodly hour of the morning to go and fetch her drunken roommate, felt no obligation to clean up.  So, the car was parked and sat for some time with festering sorority girl spew and frat boy liquid waste all over inside until the roommate got around to airing it out and having it cleaned. 

Who knows?  Maybe this is the very same red Avenger that my sister’s college roommate had.  If that’s the case, one has to wonder what type of horrible karma this Avenger must have built up in a previous life to have to deal with sorority girl vomit, frat boy urine, Northside street parking, and tornado tree crushing in this life.  Perhaps incarnation as a Dodge Avenger is punishment in and of itself, like the automotive fates exacting their own revenge on a truly horrible car, like a Yugo by recycling it into an Avenger.  The irony of name would just sting that much more.