Commanding her car, 'The General'

As a NASCAR pit reporter and in-studio anchor for Fox Sports and the SPEED Channel, Krista Voda has become an expert on cars – at least to a certain extent. “I understand racing,” says Voda. “I can talk about downforce and what’s going on with the car at a moment. But it’s not necessarily anything that I’m dealing with when I’m out on the road driving.”

Another vehicular area that Voda has gained more interest in through her NASCAR work is auto maintenance. That idea makes sense considering the fancy equipment that Voda is surrounded by during an average weekend at the track, though she also attributes that to simple maturity. “As you get older and more experienced, your money becomes a lot more important to you. You take care of things a little better.”

And, in some situations, you have to take care of things a lot better, especially when they already showed up in less than pristine condition. Such can be said for Voda’s primary personal vehicle – a red 1997 Honda Civic that has “character,” which is car code for “busted up.”

Voda bought her car used in 2000, when she was working as a sports reporter for a TV station in Lexington, Kentucky. At the time, the car was far from being a junker, but it did already have 32,000 miles on it and was also a bare-bones model, practically from the Stone Age, if one considers a lack of power locks or windows to be “primitive,” Voda describes herself as someone for whom aesthetics didn’t rank high when it came to choosing a car, so the dearth of accouterments didn’t really register with her – until a visit to her Iowa hometown recently.

“My 8-year-old nephew got in the car one day, and he said, ‘Where’s the button for the window?’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s right there – it’s that crank. Just roll it down.’ And he had never been in a car with roll-up windows. And I thought, ‘What’s wrong with this kid?’ Then I realized that no 8-year-old has ever been in a car with roll-up windows. So that’s when it really hit me that maybe I’m driving an interesting model, if nothing else. But it’s had its issues.”

Such issues include two cracks in the windshield and a defective seal that allows rain and moisture to leak into the car. “If there’s any participation, you can actually get standing water in the trunk,” says Voda. And if it’s winter – and it’s often winter in Pittsburgh, where she currently lives – she can find herself scraping both sides of her windshield.

Then there was the time she drove the Civic to a racetrack in nearby Mansfield, Ohio. At the end of the day Voda asked a colleague to drive her to the other side of the facility so she could get her ride – and to stick around to make sure that it started. It did, but her co-worker noticed something else about the Civic. “I’m telling him all about the battery issue, but I totally forgot that at the time, the plastic casing in the front right wheel well had some loose, so I actually had to strap it to the front fender with a bungee strap, and I had neglected to tell him that part of it. But that’s fixed now.”

Indeed, the Civic – named “The General” in honor of former basketball coach Bob Knight, though it also has been known as “Squeaky” or something else “based on whatever sound it’s making at the time” – has proven to be quite resilient over the years. In short, the Civic is hanging in there, but that doesn’t mean that Voda isn’t cognizant of its shortcomings, or how much longer it can get her from Point A to Point B.

“At 5 a.m., if I’m heading for the airport, I’m scraping the inside of my car.” she says. “And every time I do it, I think, ‘Why am I driving this car? I have to upgrade to a different car.’ But it just keeps doing the job, and especially now with the gas prices the way that they are, this car makes gas, at least compared to others. It gets the job done on that regard.”

Just in case the engine eventually falls out of The General, though, Voda does have backups, including a 1995 Ford Explorer, used primarily to “haul stuff,” and a dirt bike that she learned how to ride when she was covering the Supercross motorcycle circuit. She seldom gets to ride the latter these days because of her busy schedule, which often includes sideline reporting for a few of Fox’s NFL and college football broadcasts. And if and when the time comes to retire the Civic, Voda already has her eye set on its possible replacement.

“My dream car is actually an El Camino," she says, which is a car/pickup truck crossover Chevrolet sold in the 1960s through the ‘80’s. Her rationale for the unusual choice sounds reasonable – she likes the way they look

“Every time I see one, I’m drawn to it. And I think it’s because I’m a terrible decision maker. I’m one of those people who will spend 20 minutes figuring out what shirt to wear. And so, since an El Camino is part car, part truck, I think it suits my personality. I don’t have to make a decision!”