In some ways it seems like she's always been there, it's hard to remember life without her. It's been 10 years today since she and I began our life together.
Over those years we've lived together in 3 different places in two states. She and I have traveled a lot of roads together, and tens of thousands of miles. Time hasn't been kind to her, frankly she's never been much to look at, but she's almost never let me down.
She's been a loyal and steadfast companion these ten years, but frankly I'm getting a little tired of her. Although reliable as the day is long, she's never been very much fun or excitement, but as she's aged it's actually gotten worse. As much as I've appreciated the years we've spent together, I've grown impatient to see it end. I thought that we'd make it together through 2006, but now I just don't know.
Ten years is a long time for any relationship, but even more so for one with a car.
Huh? What did you think I was talking about?
It was 10 years ago today that I traded my fun loving but very temperamental (lets not mince words, it was a lemon) 1988 Nissan Pulsar NX SE for a boring but extremely dependable 1993 Ford Escort LX 5 door. A plane Jane white 5-speed with no options but a tape player, AC and some kind of lighting package (reading, glove box, under hood, trunk - this thing's got lights everywhere), this car has carried us through over 150,000 miles. There's about 178,000 on the clock now. The body is rusty, the interior is grungy, the driver's arm rest is long gone and the heater fan sometimes doesn't work but it still gets me the 26 miles to work every day and gets 35-40 MPG.
There are still a few payments left on the Odyssey and I had planned to keep the old girl until then, but I am begining to hear the siren call of either a Mazda 3 hatchback or a Protege5. I'm not sure I can hold out much longer.
Oh my goodness! We have even more in common, lol! We just gave away our 1993 white 3-door Escort about 2 months ago. It wasn't too rusty, considering we're in Michigan, and needed strutwork as well as new brakes, but she had a new transmission in 2002 and was running just fine. We had a Mercury Marquis Dh's grandpa gave us and had just bought a van, so we gave the Escort to a guy at church. He put a grand or so into it and is loving it!
That's funny. You didn't happen to buy it am Mel Farr Ford? That's where we bought ours when we lived up there.
I went through our suspention about a year and a half ago (see here). I did the front brakes at the same time. The rears need attention now, but I'm putting it off to see if I can talk myself into getting rid of it. :-)