If a car ever deserved a victory lap, it was this one
This past week, we finally sold our trusty Honda shown here with Shirley in this 12 year old photo. We’d been thinking about getting a new car for some time, but wanted to wait until we passed 200,000 miles. Once we reached that milestone, the problem was figuring out what to do. The reality is that it was a great car. It had always been insanely reliable and still got more than 40mpg — which is nice if your office is 64 miles away from home like mine. It’s hard to justify getting rid of a car like that.
However, it was literally the bottom of the line model, and driving 3 hours a day in a poorly ventilated spartan econobox on noisy highways in the summer ain’t exactly my idea of fahrvergnügen. Now we have a Subaru Outback Sport Special Edition (no photos yet). Basically, it’s an Impreza with some nice features such as all wheel drive, satellite radio, automatic climate control, and some other bells and whistles. I love it.
At the same time, Shirley and I were both sad to see the Honda go. I regret not taking a picture on the final day so you could see how good it still looked. And man, what a car. It still had the original clutch. The interior looked great and it the exterior still shone even if it had a few chips. The engine still purred. The entire time we owned it, we only paid for one repair that wasn’t scheduled maintenance — one of the CV boots cracked at 165,000 miles so we replaced that for $90. Arguably, that’s just wear and tear. We replaced the original equipment battery only last year and we were only on our second set of brake pads.
So I think it was very fitting to pull it onto the exact same lot as it had been purchased from almost exactly 12 years to the day (the Subaru dealership there was formerly a Honda dealership). I’ve never heard of anyone driving as far as we did on one clutch, one battery, or with as few problems. And while part of me wanted to hold onto it for awhile longer, I’m happy the Honda could retire gracefully with a spectacular and untarnished service record.
I don’t know what will happen to it in the end. The dealer will sell it to a wholesaler, and that particular model is preferred by kids who like to race cars because the body is light and cheap. Maybe it will get a new lease on life with a powerful engine, new transmission and suspension, and a wild paint job. Even if it just winds up running short errands in town until it stops, we’ll remember it fondly.