During our 38 years of marriage we have owned four cars: a 1970 Maverick bought 2 years before our marriage, a 1988 Honda Civic wagon, a 1993 Honda Civic sedan, and a 2005 Toyota Prius. We still own and drive the 1988 Honda, as well as the 2005 Prius.
The Maverick, white with manual everything including a three-on-the-tree standard transmission, was sold for $1 in 1992. It continued to serve its new owner for another 3 years. During our 22 years of ownership we drove about 120,000 miles which included 5 cross-country trips and countless local excursions to and from the grocery store. While shopping for the 1988 Honda, one Ford salesman called it an “antique” and felt that it was junk that should be towed off the lot.
The Honda Civic wagon, beige with power brakes, manual steering, air conditioning, and a 5 speed manual transmission became a member of the family in May 1988 when I decided to get brave and leave the comfortable world of train commuting in Chicago to become a consultant. By the time we moved back to California in 1992, I had driven almost 90,000 miles commuting around Chicago and suburbs. Since 1992, my husband has put another 140,000 miles on this car commuting around Pasadena. My husband will probably continue to drive the wagon until it falls apart around him – something it is currently trying very hard to do, possibly trying to remind us that it has passed the Maverick in number of years owned.
We bought the fire-engine red 1993 Honda when we returned to California in November 1992. Unlike the Maverick, it had power steering and brakes, as well as air-conditioning. In my job as a consultant, I could travel 100 or more miles a day. By 2005, this workhorse of a car had logged more than 248,000 miles – and it was only slightly less than 13 years old.
I made the mistake of driving my sister-in-law’s Prius during a vacation in Quebec. I fell in love with the car. It was difficult to make a decision to buy a new car since after all, the red Civic was a perfectly good car -- less than 20 years old and with fewer than a quarter of a million miles on it. I figured I had just reached the moon and was ready to start the trip back.
Given that the waiting period for the Prius, particularly the gold, fully loaded model with onboard navigation and a hands-free phone connection was at least 4 months, I decided to put in an order. After all, I could drive the red car another 10,000 miles before I had to make the decision. The call that the Toyota was available came less than a week after I ordered it. I went to pick it up. The lure of being able to drive alone in the carpool lane was too strong to ignore.
I felt disloyal and uneasy. I left the red sedan sitting abandoned in the parking lot of the Toyota dealer, never to be seen again. I took everything out of it before departing in my slick gold car. I sold it to the salesman for his daughter who is probably still driving it back and forth to school.
I fully expect at least 12 years out of this gold Toyota. However, I won’t feel that I have really gotten my money’s worth unless it stays in the family at least 20 years or 250,000 miles – whichever comes first. Any performance less than that would be a date, not a true adoption.
