It passed inspection!

I think I may have mentioned already (?) that I’m kind of a thrifty person.  I find myself often telling my son: it’s important to save money on non-essential things, so you have money not only when you need it, but also for the things you really want.

So what is non-essential and what should we really want?  I think that’s determined by the individual.

I think it’s safe to say that my son and I are opposites in many ways, but here’s a big one: one of my “non-essentials” is my car.  (To be clear, my car actually is essential!  But how it looks – well, that’s just not so important to me.)  This is mind boggling to my son, whose passion is cars, and particularly, beautiful sports cars.  I’m honestly amazed he ever sets foot in my car at all.

My car is 20-years-old, and looks that at least.  About 10 years ago the paint started chipping off in decent size amounts; in the beginning I actually bought touch-up paint and sanded and painted it.

But six years ago a sixteen-year-old girl backed into the front of the car on the driver’s side, and left an enormous dent.  (It was her first day with her license.)  Fortunately no one was in the car, but wow, it looked awful.  

The insurance company gave us $1800 to fix it, but it was still drive-able with the ugly dent, and I just couldn’t justify putting the money back into the car, since it was fourteen years old, and I was positive it was going to die any day. Why put $1800 into a car that’s about to die?

Well, this car just won’t die.

And the longer he goes (his name is Casper – he’s white like the ghost) the more I want to see how long he CAN go.

He’s kind of like an old dog, and old dogs are the best, because they’re loyal and predictable and you share years and years of special memories with them.

So for eight years now I’ve been saying that this is the year he’ll kick it – and he just keeps going.

Meanwhile, although he seems to run just fine, every single part of him is breaking apart, including most of the plastic on the inside.  The air conditioning is iffy; so is the heat.  A couple of years ago the gas gauge broke so I always have to keep track in my head of how far I’ve driven and when I need to fill up with gas again.  I was mistaken once and ran out of gas in the middle of the city and found myself stranded in the inner lane of a four lane highway.  That was not a great experience.       

The hydraulics in the trunk no longer function; I have to prop the trunk open with a 2x4 if I'm loading or unloading from it.  The back left taillight used to go out every time it rained.  We finally determined it was a cheap enough fix that it was worth paying to repair it.

Remember when my son broke this piece off the dashboard?

This mirror has been backed into more times than I can count.  It's barely hanging on - one of these days a strong wind is going to take it off completely.

My husband has enormous heavy arms - this is damage to the arm rest is from him resting his elbow.  Really!

I just noticed the plastic separating in the ignition.  This is probably not good.

Duct tape, perhaps?

So, even if Casper is still drive-able we have a bit of stress each year when it comes time to pass his annual inspection.  See, if any of the dashboard signals are lit and obviously mal-functioning, the car will not pass inspection.  Quite a few of my dashboard signals light up randomly but by some miracle have not been lit up at the time of past inspections.

For once COVID has done something good.  When vehicle inspection time rolled around this year, the emissions testing place was closed due to Coronavirus.  We waited for its reopening, only to be told eventually that any car that was due to be inspected during the first few months of COVID would be automatically passed for the year.

Congratulations, Casper!  May you continue to transport me in style.

**Note**  I was working a car show a few years ago and comparing old car stories with this guy who drove a Honda.  He showed me a photo on his phone he had just taken that week of his car’s odometer – it had just broken 500,000 miles.  Another kindred spirit!  Casper, you’ve got some competition!

**Note #2**  So if I'm saving money on my "non-essentials" like a nice-looking car, what is worth it to me to actually spend money on?  A lake house, of course!