This article was not written with the intent of urging archaeologists to stop doing archaeology and become inveterate hotrodders or slaves to their machinery. It does suggest, however, that one of the most important research investments any archaeologist can make is in his or her basic transportation. There is no reason why a carefully selected, properly maintained and protected field vehicle cannot be expected to serve faithfully for twenty years or more and to provide transportation for many successive generations of archaeologists. Because archaeologists are very much the low men on the scientific totem pole as regards to academic funding, they must expend their budgets judiciously and with the expectation that major equipment items should outlast the successive coursework investments of the students who use them. Unfortunately, it is sometime a paradox of inexplicable nature that the archaeologist who will not let a D- student near a $1500.00 alidade will nevertheless send the same person off in the $1500.00 project vehicle. If the archaeologist does not know how to rescue the vehicle from a breakdown situation, he certainly should not expect the student to know either, and can only blame himself if things go wrong.