I didn’t have a car in high school, but I had friends with cars. One girlfriend’s dad used to buy used heaps and work on them as a hobby. He regularly had one in working condition for her to use. It wasn’t always great condition, but it got her from one place to another. Janet went through at least four cars from sophomore to senior year.

One such vehicle was an oxidized red Cutlass convertible, probably chosen because it was a boat of a thing, capable of withstanding a bigger impact in an accident than something smaller. That car eventually went away before actually falling apart like some of the others. I suspect Janet’s dad got wise to the fact that a red convertible is not a car in which you want your teenage daughter and her very loud and reckless girlfriends cruising around town, the propensity for causing a ruckus being that much higher in such vehicles.