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  know this is rather old, but I thought I'd share my quick "beater" story. After selling my first true car... the one I bought with my own money, a 1979 red Corvette, I figured the place to go would be 1989 Buick Century. (It's a long story and it terrible situation that I don't care to go into) The car was definitely the Woman Motorist's definition of the term beater and only got worse as I continued to drive it.
The first minor thing was the blue fabric covering the inside of the "cabin"'s roof. For some reason, that blue fabric is impervious to any type of glue known to man. Blue is the only color of these things that I've seen start to fall off... I've been in about 15 other cars with these blue liners and it's constantly raining down that disgusting yellow foam "insulation" whenever you make a turn. And I think that the guy who thought that would make good insulation is probably the same guy who thought that having Michael Keaton hide the silver tray under his shirt in Vicki Vale's apartment to prevent getting hurt by the Joker's bullet was believable, too.
 But, my contribution to its beater-ness was when I locked my keys in the car... and they were laying right on the seat next to the spares... in my own driveway. I'm pretty sure that those long thin metal rods used to open doors (or slim-jims I think they're called) are illegal in Ohio. If they are... I didn't use one. But, if I did procur one from somewhere, it would have been old and then instrcutions would have started by noting the differences between different makes of cars. Like Datsun & AMC.(And also, if I were to have seen one of these, a tip to everyone... "bend slightly" means bend it to a 75 deg. angle) So, that didn't or wouldn't have worked. I wasn't about to break the window, so I decided to just rip the lock out. My Corvette was broken into by somebody who popped the lock. They did it without a bit of damage to the body. I don't know if they were trained by Houdini, but I commend them for their work. By the time I was done, about an inch around the keyhole on the door was more twisted than Edgar Allen Poe after doning a bottle of quaaludes. I drove that thing for about a year later with the lock hanging ever so delicately on the side of the car. I kept the key in the ignition and prayed everyday to walk out into a parking and find an empty spot where that Christine with down syndrome had been parked. That car never did die, though. I felt like I was in a remake of "The Devil and Daniel Webster", except this time, oh Danny boy was losing his case.
After almost blowing the engine the car was sold by a member of my family to someone I never met. I saw it a few months later during an ice and snow emergency sitting in someone's yard with a cardboard "For Sale" siting on the hood. It was late at night and snow was covering the entire car. You couldn't even see the front bumper. I don't know what made me look at it as my eyes were stuck so intently on the road, but just as I'm passing by I clearly the see passenger side door covered in snow except for on tiny little jagged circle where the lock was supposed to be. Apparently, Mr. Webster had worked his magic again for some other poor soul as it was gone a week later.
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