Remembering my love for a car that’s ‘been through a lot’
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The come-ons arrive in the mail a few times a week.
“We’re looking to buy your vehicle,” the correspondence says. “Trade in now and we’ll give you a great deal on a new vehicle.”
Apparently 2016 Subaru Foresters are a hot ticket these days.
I’ve been tempted to kick off 2021 with a new car. Who wouldn’t want to start a new year with a new ride, that plastic-y new car smell and all? One more payment and the loan will be paid off. The blue book says I could trade it for about $10,000 – if it’s in clean condition.
Ha! Clean condition.
I took my Subaru through the car wash this week, for the first time in almost a year. From March through November I have a bike rack attached to the hitch, which bans me from drive-through car washes. On a sunny day last week, with the hitch off for the winter, I got in line at the car wash. By then, I was driving a Subaru-shaped block of dust, salt and grime. Another spin through the cycle would have done us some good.
The car’s been through a lot.
Backing out of the driveway last summer, I sideswiped a tree, painting a 6-inch streak on the rear left panel. Most of that buffed out with a cloth. This past Halloween morning, while proceeding through a busy intersection, I was struck by a car that ran the red light. Nobody was hurt but my bumper was torn off. Police pulled the traffic camera video and confirmed the woman had run the light, so it wasn’t an expensive fender bender for me – just an inconvenient one.
There’s nothing like a rental car to put your own wheels into perspective. While my car was being repaired, I drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a vastly more luxurious vehicle than mine. Getting up into the driver’s seat required a hoisting maneuver; I could listen to show tunes on the satellite radio’s Broadway channel; it was still warm out, but I heated up my seat anyway.
And there was no clutter: no folders of work papers on the back seat, no spare bike helmet, no empty, crinkled water bottles rolling around on the floor. No rogue can of tomato soup stuck under the passenger seat, as has been the situation in my car since the month I bought it.
Not wanting to damage the car – and not feeling particularly lucky in the highway driving department – I tried not to drive it much that week. The big, shiny Jeep stayed parked in the driveway, daring an acorn to fall and ding it.
It took seven days for the auto body crew to return my Subaru to its former, well-loved, modest glory. Compared to the spacious rental car, my Forester suddenly felt cheap and small, like driving an amusement-park bumper car. Reaching for the knob to tune in some show tunes, I remembered I don’t have satellite radio.
But I also don’t have a car payment.
My Subaru has another 100-thousand miles of life in it. Maybe I’ll spring for a professional detailing with the car payment money I’m saving. Try as I might, I can’t get whatever that crusty stuff is out of the space around the cup holders.
The Subaru is the eighth or ninth car I’ve owned since I started driving. This one doesn’t have the memories of those middle-year cars, the ones that had child seats or the third row in the back to carry kids. This car has carried mostly just me and my bike.
And that can of tomato soup, still stuck there under the seat.