. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”
This week, I’m expressing thanks for my 2003 Honda Civic.
It served us well. We’ve had a lot of adventures together. From the time we acquired it, on January 10, 2004, when it had only 54 miles on its odometer, to 9:40 pm on June 19, 2022, when it overheated, smoking, near Hartsburg on Highway 63, with 288,380 miles, it gave us countless good rides. It even stayed running long enough for me to swing off the highway, give it one more pulse of the accelerator, and then coast, as the engine cut out, to near the stop sign at the quiet intersection of Westbrook and Mount Pleasant roads, just off the highway, but completely and safely out of traffic.
It was almost like it was taking care of us one last time.
It literally blew a gasket—the head gasket. The only fix, at this point, would be a new engine, which, of course, is ridiculous for a nineteen-year-old car with 288,380 miles on it. All that’s left is to salute it, with thanks, for its terrific performance and reliability.
I have to admit, I was never smitten with the car. At the time we got it, I was hoping to get a car that was, well, a color. Instead, we bought it off the lot when it was the only vehicle with the options we wanted. And, being past the model year, it was on sale. So instead of it being a pretty Galapagos Green Metallic, Eternal Blue Pearl, or Radiant Ruby Pearl Civic, we ended up with a car that was Shoreline Mist Metallic—the “beige” of that model year. Or as my dad called a similar color of their first Ford Taurus, “metallic-dirt-color.” How do you describe that color when you sign in at a hotel, or request roadside assistance from AAA? . . . “It’s metallic tan. Sort of silvery beige?”
My 1989 Civic had been “Almond Cream”—which was unquestionably beige. It was also not a sexy car, but it was extremely practical and perfect for me in the years I lived in Arizona and Montana. It got beautiful gas mileage and also was incredibly reliable. Remember when you could get a car without power window and door locks?
I can totally see why there are Civic enthusiasts. Now that I’ve had a fourth-generation Civic sedan and a seventh-generation one, I’m having trouble thinking of a single reason not to get an eleventh-generation one. Especially since, after some years of designs that seemed uninteresting to me, the current Civics have a simpler, classier, yet still sporty, design.
Our usual m.o. is to hang on to cars as long as they keep running reliably. We accept that as they get older, they’ll start looking cruddy. But until the repair bills start getting truly painful and repetitive, we still prefer occasional repairs to having monthly, mandatory car payments. We know our car’s history; replacing it with some stranger’s used car that is one-third to one-half used up is full of question marks. Yet, replacing it with a brand new car is dauntingly expensive.
Admittedly, as the car has aged, and we’ve gotten more interested in comfort, we’ve opted to use rental cars for out-of-state trips. This kept the extra miles off the elderly Honda while also letting us luxuriate in quiet, smooth-gliding sedans with oodles of cargo room.
My 2003 Civic was totaled twice in recent years. It’s easy to total a car that is only worth about $1,500 or $2,000. First, on October 3, 2018, an 18-wheeler waiting to our right at a stoplight, as we waited to turn left, unexpectedly also turned left when the light turned green, and it crunched against the side of the car (that was a long story involving a construction zone and a less-than-capable construction worker who screwed up as she directed the truck to turn when it wanted to go straight.) Ugh.
The car needed serious work on the front right quarter panel plus the right headlight and bumper; the other injuries, though, were mostly cosmetic. The semi trailer rubbed against the car at very low speed. Amazingly, I could fix the car (enough) for just about the same amount as the insurance settlement gave me for it.
The next time the car was totaled was March 27, 2020, when we got tennis-ball-sized hail.
In the case of the hail, it was only a broken windshield and destroyed windshield washer nozzle-thingie that needed replacing. The rest of that damage comprised dents that were best left alone.
After all this, the car looked pretty roughed up, but amazingly it was not rusted out. It still cleaned up well. I was never embarrassed to drive it (although I was kind of sheepish when I used it to drive myself and a friend to a luncheon with the upper classes at the local country club). But by now, it definitely has a “good side” and a “bad side.”
Man, just think of all the adventures we’ve had with this car! Countless trips to Ohio to visit Sue’s family. Countless in-state trips to St. Louis, Kansas City, Hermann, the Lake of the Ozarks, and all kinds of special places. Plenty of gravel roads and conservation areas, church picnics, state historic sites, festivals, concerts, you name it.
Since Sue has kept her 1994 Ranger, with its manual transmission that I’ve never mastered, the 2003 Civic was “my” car. For four years, I drove it back and forth between Jefferson City and Columbia for work. I don’t miss wasting that 5 hours a week of my life spent commuting. But except for when the weather was nasty, it was usually a pleasant drive, in that car.
Although I can get a little misty as I think with nostalgia about this car, as if it were a part of my family, as if it were a person, I’ll stop. I know it’s just a thing.
And I know we probably held on to it too long. But who has a crystal ball? Since the world changed in 2020 due to COVID, nothing’s gotten back to “normal” yet. Car shopping in 2022 is fraught, whether you’re talking new or used: the prices are higher than ever (but come on, will they ever really go back down?); car production is low because key supplies are low; and there’ve been some notable natural disasters (flooding, hurricanes, etc.) in recent years that cast doubt on the soundness of used vehicles.
Dealer’s lots are shockingly empty. Around here, at least, they’re all looking like used-car lots, and sparse ones at that. They’re just selling any old cars that come to them, you'd think. Around here, they’re not even offering them as Honda Certified Used Cars. And the big dealer-companies shift vehicles near and far, trying to guess what towns will buy which cars.
The local Honda dealers don’t even have sample new cars for you to drive. It’s a three-month wait plus a deposit, if you want to order a new car from the factory.
I suppose times are changin’. More and more people are happy to buy things, anything, online, sight-unseen. And un-test-driven.
Will we ever return to the point where dealers fill their lots with shiny new cars? Even when computer chips and other supply-chain items become readily available again, why would the car industry want to go back to the situation where tons of unsold stock sits out in the weather, needing eventually to be sold with rebates in order to create space on the lots for the new model year? Why would they do that?
After all these thoughts, and after looking at used cars that are available, we decided to put a deposit on a new car. The choices in used cars were pretty unappealing (though I'm pretty sure the ones they showed us were ugly ones in an attempt to encourage us to buy new--dealers can be so frickin' crooked). We got over our sticker shock (when you haven’t bought a new car in about twenty years, the prices seem outrageous). It’ll be all right. The car we’ve settled on is already in production, so we should have it within only about a month. And the new car will be not only reliable, but also attractive (even, dare I say?) sexy. We’re looking forward to having a car that—who knows—might feel like a facelift for our sense of style. The neighbors will be going, “Whoa!”
UPDATE, 7/19/22: Jefferson City Honda pulled a bait-and-switch on us! The nifty sonic gray metallic Civic Sport, already in production and supposed to arrive in early August, that we had supposedly put dibs on with our deposit, somehow simply evaporated (or, I bet, they sold it to someone else--hey, maybe someone offered them more money for it--which is totally crooked if they accepted it), and so they offered us a white one . . . which would arrive in September. So I'm pretty damn down on my local Honda dealer. Not on Hondas . . . just on this damn crooked (or at best, inept) dealer.
. . . No wonder I hate buying cars. It's much better to find a good one and drive it until the gaskets blow out. We've just started looking at other dealers now, with our arrival date shifted to, probably, October. JC Honda just kinda wasted a month of our precious time.
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