Paying Out Cash For My Clunker

A month ago, when entering the TIA short-term parking garage my truck stalled. It restarted okay but the temperature gauge was pinned. Two weeks later at a cost of over $5,000 it was back on the road.

Never having required anything other than regular maintenance, without hesitation I authorized my trusted mechanic to begin work immediately. After 14 years of being a reliable source of transportation, it remains the most trusted of the five vehicles I’ve owned over the past four decades.

The goal of a vehicle taking me over 100K miles through life has finally been met. The ’69 Gremlin didn’t make it. Neither did the ’76 Mustang, my favorite. Each had less than 90K miles. The interior of the Gremlin was simply worn out and didn’t have air. The Mustang had transmission and cooling system problems.

I really liked the dealer-used ’81 Mazda 626 but the manual shift was too annoying in the stop-n-go traffic in Los Angeles. Still, I would have kept it indefinitely but for an accident that totaled the car. The other driver went through a stop sign, barely hit the rear passenger side of my car and put me in a slow motion rollover that ended with the car upside down and sliding into two parked cars before coming to a halt.

I was out of work for a few months, an unpleasant healthcare fiasco.

I then bought a fully automatic ’86 Mazda 626, U-Hauled it cross-country to Florida on a flat-bed trailer in ’88 and kept it until ’95 when electrical problems at 98K miles led to the purchase of the Toyota 4Runner.

So, on July 1, AAA towing service delivered the truck to Brooksville to be rehabilitated by the masterful mechanics at ToyoDoc.

A Toyota Camry is the traveling car so the truck has never been outside Florida, primarily used to get to and from work and numerous jaunts to Daytona Beach when I lived in Orlando. A minor rear-end nudge pinned the bumper to the back tires. No other accidents.

As a homeowner, it’s been indispensable not only to myself but also to friends when needed. Only two other people have driven it, when I was a little tipsy. I’ve taken very good care of it. Some exterior scratches and dings, barely noticeable, and a few interior scrapes and digs, most of which I caused while hauling things. It’s a truck. The antenna remains broken. The speakers need replacing. Other minor concerns, all cosmetic. My faith in the quality of Toyota products assures me it’ll see me through another decade or more, if I should live that long. Que sera, sera.

Actually, my disinterest in new cars might appear insulting to others but I’m not a car person. It might look nice and pretty but how much per month?, for how many years? and at what increase in auto insurance? are thoughts not actually verbalized. People have different values.

I cringe when a new car owner starts talking about dealer problems. Or when they say there are so many fancy options that it would take a year to read the manual (respectful laughter, please, for the bland sense of humor), and the inevitable whining about parking lot door dings and bumper scratches. It happens and other car owners don’t care.

Then there’s the “Hop in, I’ll give you a ride.” “Wows!” and “That’s unbelievable!” are said out of obligation. Consumer driven technology is truly amazing – can’t live without it, right? Just get me from point A to point B with air or heat as needed. Most everything else is fluff and something else that can go wrong. Okay, I like electric windows and door locks.

The ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme was never an option for me. Before the July 24 kick-off, my truck had already been resurrected. It’s not a ‘junker’. It had a boo-boo that may have been avoided if it had been checked out when I first noticed an odd noise. I still saved thousands of dollars and years of car payments that wouldn’t fit into my budget anyway. When The Big One hits, it’ll safely transport my cats, a few emergency essentials and myself to Tennessee, if not for some other life-changing mission.

The 250,000 new cars sold under the plan are mainly foreign made, replacing American brands. They get an average increase of nearly 10 mpg, reducing nationwide gasoline use, thus greenhouse gas emissions, by a paltry .04 percent. Annual savings are about $600 at $2.70/gallon if driven the same number of miles. The debt to trade-in ratio isn’t an enticement.

The plan may temporarily keep a number of employees from becoming the latest victims of the recession but six months down the road the streamers and balloons will be gone as will many of the dealerships.