While I’m a bike and pedestrian advocate, we still live in a society where it’s pretty tough to live without a car. And I DO like to drive. Today Facebook reminded me it’s been four years since our trusty Mazda 3 was rear-ended. Given that our latest car was stolen two weeks ago (a story for another day), I got to thinking about the cars I’ve had.
1988 Acura Integra
This was my first car. My parents bought it for me because I was going to high school an hour away from home and they couldn’t get me there (at least not without turning their lives upside down). Such a great little car. Reliability of a Honda Civic but SO much more fun to drive. I didn’t have it long – I was rear-ended on 97N on the way to take the AP Spanish test. I got a ride to school from a Maryland state trooper and I was deeply disappointed that everyone was in class by then so no one saw me getting dropped off.
1989 Acura Integra
Insurance paid for the replacement. This was one trim level up from the first one. I loved it even more. Both Integras had giant subwoofers in the trunk and I installed a kill switch to turn them off as I approached my house so my mom didn’t get mad. When I went to college I didn’t get to keep the car. I think my siblings ran it into the ground.
1988 Honda Accord
It had 175,000 miles when I got it. Incredibly well-maintained, incredibly boring. It had a manual transmission and a sunroof, though, so it wasn’t all bad.
1995 Toyota Tacoma
This was the first car I purchased myself. Manual transmission, 4X4. It could drive over anything. Highlights include 1) putting a tarp in the back for a house party, filling it with ice, and using it as a cooler 2) pulling a stuck Chevy pickup out of the mud 3) driving in the snow 4) having a cicada fly in the window on 66 and explode against the back window. Lowlights were mostly helping literally everyone in the DMV move at one time or another. It had 70K miles when I bought it. I sold it to my then-brother-in-law with 235K and the original clutch. It broke 250k before the transmission died on him and he got rid of it. It’s probably still out there somewhere.
2006 Mazda 3
My first new car. I had just bought a condo and was living on my own for the first time. The condo was not the greatest investment (absolute peak of the market, I had a $31,000 escalation clause on my offer) but the I got my money’s worth out of the Mazda. It drove my wife to the birth center to give birth to both our kids and carted them around through middle school. It was rear-ended on the way home from Rehoboth summer of 2020.
2020 Toyota RAV4 hybrid
First time I ever owned an automatic transmission. Good car. You could coax 52 MPG out of it if you were easy on the gas. 40 MPG with normal driving. It was stolen from outside our hotel in Montreal two weeks ago.
Next?
Almost definitely another RAV4 hybrid. I would love something fully electric but they are SUPER expensive and we don’t have off-street parking to charge it, so it would be a constant hassle.
@complain Wonderful history. Slightly amusing that my first new car was a 2010 Mazda 3, and it was the 5th car I had (if you count the one I "inherited" through marriage in 2001)
They’re such great cars. I would totally buy another Mazda if they got anything resembling good gas mileage. Unfortunately the CX-50 Hybrid isn’t out yet and we need a car now. By the time we need another car, the kids will be out of the house and we might just not get another.
@LhasaCM @complain Heh. I just did a count and my first new car was also my fifth (if you include the 1969 Chevy Impala I drove in HS but never held title to).
Thereafter:
– 1967 VW Fastback (manual transmission) gifted to me by a friend
– Toyota Starlet (w/manual choke!); bought used, I forget the model year—maybe 1982
– Toyota Corolla wagon, used; maybe 1992 model year. Totaled in rear-end collision.
– Mazda 6 wagon, purchased new ~2000. This car was cursed & died in a fire, literally.
@20002ist @complain Yeah – I wasn't limiting myself to pesky things like "titles."
My history, BTW:
* 1983 Dodge 400 (old family car; didn't even last me a year before a terrible 2-week period where the brakes failed, resulting in a minor fender bender (that cost me $800 plus the cost of the brakes), then the engine died on the way home from my grandfather's house after we replaced the brakes. Would've been $4k to rebuild the engine or $200 to scrap it, so we scrapped it.)
@20002ist @complain
* 1977 Buick LeSabre (inheritance from my great grandmother – had a mismatched steering column from the time it was stolen for a joyride and we had to replace it. During the rebuild my uncle broke the family TV by letting a spring go flying into the screen)
* 1989 Chevy Corsica (bought for $500 from my future sister-in-law to have something for here; gas tank rusted through within 6 months of being in Virginia so the apartment complex towed it; we just scrapped it)
@20002ist @complain
* 2000 Saturn (wife bought new, so was ~2 years old when we got married. Solid, but unremarkable.)
* 2010 Mazda3 (only new car I bought – also only car I bought at a dealer – had some electrical gremlins throughout its life, so when the battery completely died and we went a month without caring, we decided it was time to go car-free; got a great price at CarMax when M was out at some trampoline party place, so sold it)
@LhasaCM @20002ist @complain I feel like I haven’t put enough into the car economy! I’ve had a Golf Mk3, Mk4, and a GTI Mk 5. Which I still own and drive less and less