Saul came into my life in September 2022 and has been my best friend ever since. Saul is my 2023 Subaru Crosstrek which I’ve put a little too much work and money into. I was skeptical about getting him at first, because of all the shade people throw at Subarus, due to the fact that they are prone to breaking down. However, I moved past those silly acquisitions and decided to make Saul my own.

A usual morning with Saul starts out with scraping all of the ice off of him then hopping in his orange stitched cloth seats. I start him up and listen to the roar of the Nameless exhaust system I put on him. The part that I dread comes dawning on me. Saul has a manual transmission, I have to sit there and wait for his engine to warm up so the cold doesn’t damage him. As I sit there, I’m always amazed by the attention to detail from the factory in the interior. It’s black with orange stitching all around and even some carbon fiber trim that I threw on. I wiggle his shifter back and forth in neutral out of pure boredom, waiting for the RPMs to drop below 1000 (Which means the engine is warmed up). The cold light finally turns off so I throw it in reverse and Saul and I are off!

Along our “trek” to school, I move swiftly through the first three gears of his transmission, cruising through the neighborhoods. As we reach the stoplight right before the on ramp to the highway, I know that the highlight of my morning is coming up. As soon as the light strikes green, I slam down on the throttle and we fly up to highway speeds. While Saul is letting out a ferocious roar, I bang through five gears, pushing the engine to 6000 RPMs every shift. Saul is able to stretch to this amount of power because I got a tune on the limiter in the ECU. We cruise down the highway all the way to school. Once we roll into the school parking lot, I sometimes give it a little throttle just to hear some pops and bangs from the hot engine cooling down. I hop out and lock him up, and look back to take one last glance at Saul before the long school day.

After school lets out, I rush over to the Junior lot to get out of there before traffic hits. I track down Saul, and repeat the same process and I did in the morning, but usually no ice this time. Once we leave school, I sometimes take him to the gas station to get cleaned out and fueled up. We roll into the station, still getting some weird looks from the noise, and stop at a pump. I usually pick 83 octane, but E85 if I’m feeling good to fill up Saul. I clear out all the trash from inside of him that had developed over the week, take the pump out and hop back in. I start him up one last time for the day and the exhaust makes one big bang, since the engine is still warm. We head on home and I lock Saul up for the night, taking one last look back at my “race car” in the driveway before heading into the house.