To me cars are a necessity. If I lived in a big city with great public transportation I would gladly give up my vehicles, buy a good bike and make my way around that way. However living in rural Nova Scotia with four kids having a car, and in our case two, is pretty much needed.
Although we have gotten by for months now on one vehicle as my poor 2002 Honda Civic was first laid up in the driveway and then at a mechanic friends for a while. On Sunday though I was able to go pick it back up.
Something has been draining the battery so especially in the winter if it sat for anytime at all the battery died and wouldn’t start without a long charge and boost. Instead I going through that hassle we let it sit.
It’s only been three years I’ve owned this car but it is by far my favourite I’ve owned. It’s funny because it was already ten years old when I bought it and I’ve owned a couple brand new cars before it.
It’s not the prettiest car and there is plenty wrong with it, but I still enjoy driving it. It runs well, and I get great gas mileage especially compared to the big SUV that is our other vehicle.
There should be things wrong with it, it’s thirteen years old now and has over 200,000 kilometres on it. There are some things that would make people crazy I’m sure, but it’s part of what I like about it.
The fact that one of the back windows won’t go down is no big deal. I don’t sit back there, my window still goes down. The air conditioning is no longer cold, but again my window goes down. Besides that I live in Nova Scotia Canada, there isn’t much of the year we really need air conditioning. The heat still works, that’s the important part around here.
Having to go in through the trunk to open the fuel door every time you put gas in it drives my wife crazy. That’s ok in my books, I don’t have to fill it up often anyway. I could just leave the door open all the time, but it looks a bit better closed.
The trunk release no longer works either but it was causing the latch to get stuck closed so that once the trunk was open you couldn’t get it to close again. A cold winter morning dropping the kids off at school and I took the cable off so I could get it closed. Now I just need to use the key to open the trunk, that’s not a big deal.
There are scratches and minor dents, there are hub caps missing, there are warning lights on the dash that don’t go away, there are some rubber seals and trim coming off, but who cares. It’s thirteen years old! It’s not a beauty contest and it still drives pretty darn nice.
Having it gone for so long really made me realize how much I like it. Not just because of all the extra gas we were burning because we had to take the big SUV everywhere even if there was only one of us going. Jumping in, rolling my window down and taking off in my little standard five speed is fun. Just a different feeling than the big SUV that’s an automatic.
This last thing is causing me a little bit of despair though, but I’m still working on fixing it. To stop the battery from draining it was narrowed down to a fuse. Unfortunately it controls things like my remote door locks, power outlet, some other things, but most importantly the radio. So now I can’t listen to music or the CBC when cruising around. I’m still working to see if I can narrow down exactly what is causing the drain so I can at least get some of these things back.
It’s been so good to me though that I can live with all that’s wrong with it. If it died tomorrow and just refused to go on I’d be sad. But in all reality I’ve gotten more than my money worth out of this car and I really see me driving it for a few years yet.
