Farewell to an Old Friend (not anything that breathes)

My post has nothing to do with this horse running at me. I just ran across the photo and thought it was cool. It's Darryl's horse, Sarah, and she won't run over me. I promise. Not only will I not let her she just has more sense than that.

Nope. We said farewell to our 2002 Prius yesterday. Yes, it happened. After all these years she finally became more expensive to repair than her worth. The story goes like this:

D was headed to work early one morning last week. Not long after he left the phone rang. (I really, really hate those phone rings in the dark. They seldom bode well). It seems the Prius quit twice on him and would I go warm up the Fiesta while he limped home to switch cars. So he drove the Fiesta until yesterday. Yesterday was his day off and the Toyota dealer was open.

So he wakes me up at 5:30 on his day off (hey, that's sleeping in for an hour for him) and off we went to be one of the first in line for service at Modesto Toyota. I drove the Fiesta so we could leave the Prius and come home until they called to tell us what the problem was. I didn't see why we had to get up so early but did what my husband asked me to do.

The fatal call came. The Prius needs a $1695 catalytic converter AND a $3724 inverter. So before we picked up the car we discussed what we needed to do. The car has just under 317,000 miles on it. Trade in value in that shape is around $1800 if you can clear the fault logger so the dealer doesn't know there's stuff wrong. Can you sell a car with that many miles that needs that much work? Do you pour almost three times the value in the car into it and hope it will run another 100,000 miles?

Trading it in on a new car is out of the question. I hate car payments and have one already. I refuse to take on another. D wants to dump the money in the car. I want to dump the car asap because if it would be hard to sell now, how hard will it be to sell with even more miles on it? It would be junk and what if we can get a couple bucks out of it now.

So I went on line to Carmax to see if they buy cars if you don't buy one of theirs. They do. I did research and hoped we could get $$1500 for the car. D thought more. I laughed. They figure to sell it again so, of course, they would give us less than trade in for it. I figured anything was a plus. So I called and made an appointment.

We went back to Modesto and picked up the Prius from Modesto Toyota. They cleared the fault logger so there was no big ! on the screen in the car indicating a problem. We drove it directly from the Toyota dealer down the block to Carmax. They looked it over, drove it, and their experts appraised it. They offered us $1200 for the car. We took it. They were delighted to have it. They love to get used Prius in there. They marveled at the mileage and the good shape of the body and interior. Normal dings nothing extreme. It is the highest mileage Prius they have ever seen.

So we did the paperwork, with me jabbing D every time he started on one of his long winded stories. I wanted out of there before they drove the car very far, like to the parking lot behind the building, and the fault logger blazed an error on the screen in the dashboard. We finished up the paperwork and got out of there as quickly as possible without running. They give you a bank draft. We headed straight to the bank and deposited the money. Whew!

D is a little emotional about the loss of his beloved Prius and is complaining about the seats in the Fiesta and how it hesitates if you punch it. He's a little calmer today. But he was a pain in the _ _ _ last night. He said how we bought the Fiesta for me (he seems to forget we bought the Prius for me too) and he shouldn't take over my car for commuting. Today he's feeling better about the whole thing. It helped that we discussed all the cool stuff the Fiesta's Sync system does that I have never figured out. Besides making and answering phone calls by talking to it. So now he has a research project figuring out how the car will read his text messages to him and send them. How it will play his favorite tunes or play lists by artist, song, album, genre, or whatever he chooses. I think it does some other stuff too but never figured it all out. I'll leave it to the tech dude to figure out.

The fact of the matter is Darryl doesn't do change very well. He is finally used to my need to rearrange furniture and update my environment. But if he had his way he'd never change anything.
He's much better than he used to be but sometimes it takes a few days for him to digest a new situation.

So now I'm back to driving the truck for now. We are going to buy a very, very inexpensive used car for me to drive around here that will be better on gas and save mileage on the truck. I found a nice used Mustang but it was sold. I also found a nice Miata that gets fabulous gas mileage. D had nothing nice to say about anything I found. But today he sent me a text about the Miata. I think the Mustang is sold since I can't get in touch with the owner. Only 58,000 miles on it too. But we have plenty of time to find something. I have no idea what it will be. I know the right vehicle for the right price is out there or will be soon. I have patience and time.