In the midst of the end of Cash For Clunkers, some thoughts on my old car that I keep firing up each and every day.

Do you drive one of these?

The engine rattles a little bit or maybe a little bit more than that, you may find a french fry from 2002 under the console, the A.C. quit working sometime around when John Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination.

I’m a proud driver of a P.O.S.  My piece of…steel.

It’s a 1998 Toyota Corolla.  Midnight blue.  140,000 miles and I’m hoping to hit 200,000 before I push, pull or drag it into a car lot for another car.

The plan is, by that time, I’ll be pushing 40 and just getting all fitted for my Midlife Crisis car.  Let’s just say that it won’t be a 1998 Corolla.

The circumstances behind the arrival of the 1998 Corolla are out of riveting fiction.  A 16-year-old blows through a stop sign and totals my wife’s car.  She was more shocked than anything else but then we had to go car shopping.  Tired of the constant mechanical troubles with her three-year-old car, we zoomed over and checked out a used Corolla.

Even for a “used” car, we shelled out $13,000 for the 1998 Corolla when we signed on the dotted line in September of 1999.  That was a ton of money for us — especially when you factor in the Financial Apocolypse of Y2k.  (What?  You didn’t squirrel away money and head for a secluded cabin in the Minnesota Northwoods?)

Here is the true beauty of driving and old car with a current Kelley Blue Book Value of, drumroll please… $1,025:

- Dents?  What Dents?  We have all had the friends with the new car or SUV that is about 50% of their salary.  They wash the cars every three days, scan weather radar to check for any hail, refuse to park next to other cars at the mall and, in the words of Ferris Bueller, “spend their time rubbing it with a diaper”.  I would feel comfortable driving that Corolla in the Baja 500, the nastiest off-road race in the Western Hempishere.  Provided I got the A.C. fixed, of course.

- The Glory Years With No Payments.  We haven’t had any payments on Bad Blue in years.  With a $1,025 KKB value, I imagine that we should be about five years since the payments ended and that’s about right.  I think of people shelling out $379 or $445 - maybe even more - for their vehicle.  For many people, no car payments would equate to about $4,000 or $5,000 a year.  That’s substantial.  You could feed a kid — or even really save for college for a few years if you can even go four years without those payments. 

Of course, many people find it necessary to drive late-model cars.  If my commute was longer than three miles, I probably would take a look at something that is not more reliable — this Corolla has been fairly trouble-free — but something more, ahem, “upscale”.  Managers, realtors, sales specialists and many other professions also have a quiet, unspoken need to ‘present an element of success’.  I definitely understand that.

Yet with the constant push, even aided by the government, to trade in these “clunkers”, I kept thinking of me and my Corolla.  We’ve been through good times and desperate days — three moves, four cities and two children.  Years ago, it was still the ‘primary vehicle’, the car that we took each of our two children home from the hospital in.  That’s trust.

Now, it’s different.  We’ll put new tires on it and quietly hope that will take care of the power train deficiencies, even though we know it’s not the case.  My wife, who originally picked the Corolla, now treats the car like the old green couch that used to be in the living room and is now in the basement. 

That’s fine as well.  

Still, I hope that the experience with the Corolla also rubs off on my two children.  I’m now nine years from having to figure out a way to afford insurance for a 16-year-old.  No, I have no plans to still have the ’98 Corolla in working order when my son turns 16.  That would be a 20-year-old car.  (Side note: Classic cars are different because of generational shifts.  When I got my driver’s license on Friday, November 8, 1990, a 20-year-0ld car would be a ‘70 Chevy Nova — a true classic design, much more so than a 1998 compact.  I’d NEVER do that to my off-spring).  

Besides, now that I pass a decade with the Corolla, I am pushing for another four or five years of ratting down the roads of Cedar Rapids in it.  Then, I’ll finally be ready with the cliche of the Midlife Crisis car.  Silver, sporty but still less than the $13,000 we paid in 1999 for this car.

Yet before I sign the contract, at age 40, to drive away in the cliche, I’ll stop by the grocery store to mark the end of care-free car ownership.

I’ll make sure to pick up diapers.