the Way of the Turtle

GOODBYE SUBARU... HELLO HONDA
Saturday, April 28, 2007

Almost 13 years ago (July, 1994) I purchased my first new car... a 1995 Subaru Legacy Sedan. I'd had some good cars prior to that one, but a brand new Legacy - what a great car!

Almost 310,000 miles later, the years and heavy use had taken their toll. During the past two years I was seeing increasing signs of expensive maintenance and repairs, with the two most worrisome being a leaking fuel system (possibly brought about by hitting a really nasty hole in the road when driving through New Brunswick, Canada, several summers ago) and an increasingly nasty bearing grind from somewhere along the rear axles. After 8 years of no car payments, I was really hoping to delay the inevitable by a few more years (and really, how cool would it be to have a Subaru that made it to 350,000 miles!) But towards the end of March the writing on the wall became clear, and I gritted my teeth and began the distasteful task of looking for another car.

Fairly early on, I ended up at the dealership which had done a good deal of service work on my Subaru, looking for another Soob. Unfortunately, all the used Soobs were either out of my price range, or had too many miles on them for me to easily get financing. Much to my surprise, however, they ended up offering to sell me a 2003 Honda Civic EX sedan, with relatively low miles. I admit I was initially skeptical, but was again surprised when I drove the car and discovered that rather than a low-end Honda manufactured box-on-wheels, this was a relatively loaded sedan with many of the same features as my Legacy, and almost as much interior room. After checking on a few other possibilities, I was finally sold on the Civic in part due to its fuel economy... a great feature, given the way gas prices are rising again.

So last night I emptied my remaining stuff out of the Legacy and drove it for the last time over to the dealership. After much paperwork and beauracratic nonsense, I left in a very nice Civic which will hopefully last me for many, many years with as little trouble as my Soob gave me.

I'm not a car person. My needs in a car are simple - reliability (which is where the Legacy was failing) and comfort/convenience (which includes power windows and locks, and continues to include a moonroof.) I really didn't care that my Legacy was starting to accumulate rust and was no longer the shiny attractive vehicle it had been when I first bought it. If it had remained reliable, I would have happily kept driving it until it fell apart, rather than re-entering the world of the horribly indebted (and the bank is getting a very good return on their money, at my expense. Bleah.) And I'll do the same with this Civic, assuming it holds up as well as Honda's generally do.

But I have to admit, I felt a bit sad as I left my old Legacy to its fate. Not so much because I have a particular attachment to the car itself... but because I have a lot of memories attached to that car. Trips to parks, drives all over New York and New England, travelling to races, sitting on the hood to change shoes or chow down after a race... 13 years is a long time, and I've gone a lot of miles and seen a lot of places in that car.

No doubt before long the Civic will stop feeling like just another rental (I've been in a few of those over the past six months!) and I will certainly do my best to go a lot of miles and see a lot of places in it. Next week it will get christened at its first race (ie. gear all over the car, and wet smelly clothes afterwards) - the Medved Madness 15 Mile trail race at Mendon Ponds park. Should be a blast!

JMH