I’ve always been amused at the notion of trading in your car. People actually do that, I’m told, cleaning and painting and fixing up their existing vehicle to get a little money toward the new car they’re eyeing, even though the dealer most likely gauged the worth of their wreck as soon as they pulled into the lot and mentally adjusted his invoices to match before ever strapping on his smile.
Trading in a car, for me, would be an exercise in futility, and I hate exercise. I shed them instead, casting them aside only after I’ve wrung every last ounce of usefulness out of them. Something like a hermit crab whose previous home started smoking and stalling at stoplights.
I’ve rarely stuck with a specific type of vehicle; when you buy based on an immediate need and whatever’s in your pocket by looking over the ads while sitting in your half-ton, still-pinging paperweight, the choice of make, model, or color rarely enters into your figuring. A wheel on at least three corners and some way to make it go and stop more or less on demand would be the high bar, with anything else an optional extra.
On the plus side, I almost always get more from my cars than even their manufacturers thought possible.
Who says you need 4-wheel drive to get up a 40-degree incline? You just need speed, determination, a complete lack of sense or personal safety, and an ’82 Chevette. I regularly drove through hip-high waves on the beach without getting stuck, smacked a shopping cart head-on at 60 mph on John Anderson (self-defense), drove backwards through neighborhoods to see if it would bring my odometer down, and my Chevette took it all with a smile and surprisingly little fluid. I added “FUMES” under the “E” on my gas gauge with Letraset letters and the needle could drop to the “U” before I got concerned. I think it actually managed to strain nutrients from the air.
After a completely necessary collision with a garbage truck it was replaced with a massive Oldsmobile-something my dad gave me, large enough to house a family of four and their horses. That one lasted a year after several mechanics assured me it was on its last legs, and then only because I was waiting to turn onto my parents’ street in Ormond Beach and a distracted guy in a truck carrying 1,000 lbs of salt blocks plowed into me at full speed. (I drove home anyway; his truck was totaled. Buy American!)
(Although that was beaten by my wife’s car, an ’83 Cadillac DeVille, which was once lightly rear-ended at a stoplight in DeLand and we didn’t notice. When the frantic woman behind us came up to knock on our window and make sure no one had been killed we just thought she wanted a dollar.)
My ’80 Chevy Malibu survived catching on fire on I-4 (even after the flames leaped out from under the hood, still we heroically went back to rescue the cassettes) and losing most of its suspension system to the point where I started keeping bus money on me since it was obvious I could become a pedestrian at any moment. It died a peaceful death, and I moved on with my life.
My ’76 Toyota Corolla dropped at just under 200k, and the car I was driving until last week, a ’92 Toyota Tercel, crossed the 205k mark -- the last 5,000 miles on 2 and ½ cylinders -- and my brother-in-law plans to get it running again anyway just out of dogged persistence.
There are certain techniques to this style of car-wringing – buy from someone you trust, pay in full, oil everything religiously, and most importantly, give up on keeping your car showroom-fresh. I’ll keep the interior clean because that’s the part I see, and I’ll keep the engine clean and lubricated because that’s what keeps me from walking, but I prefer my cars to look a little junky outside. I don’t need to pick up women and who cares what other drivers think? My cars run forever and never get broken into or stolen. My ideal car would be a Lexus interior stuffed into a heap of rust.
So now I’m off to begin running my “new” car into the ground. Judging from experience, it should take me another six or seven years, so I’d better get started. These things don’t abuse themselves, you know…
