Upon graduation from college I was given the family car. It was a ~1977 seafoam green Pontiac station wagon. It had replaced a brown/green station wagon of unknown/unremembered vintage which had replaced a dark red Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, also a station wagon, and it had cool windows above the middle row of seats.
Funny story about the Pontiac. Mom and I were driving somewhere, probably out to my grandparents' house. We were passed by a pretty Cadillac and Mom turned to look and commented about how she wanted a car that color. I told her she was in a car that color.
I traded the Pontiac in on May 30th, 1985 for a new light blue 5-speed Honda Civic. It had 9.6 miles on it. Gas was $1.169 and I got 30-45 mpg and once 79 mpg when I drafted a truck on a trip down I-95. For some reason I didn't write down how much I paid for the Civic.
Dan and I got married in 1990.
On June 11th, 1993 we bought a new maroon Plymoth Voyager for $15,767. It had 33 miles on it. (Dan gave/sold? his red Dodge Colt to his brother and we bought a used Dodge black/gray mini wagon and traded it in on the Voyager, that but I have no data about those cars.) Gas was about $1.139 and we got 20 mpg.
On July 31, 1999 the Honda had already gone 117,311 miles when it was backed into by an over-sized pickup whose driver just didn't see it behind him. We sold it to State Farm for $1500.
On August 10th, 1999 we bought a new dark red 5-speed Toyota Corolla for $15150. It had 171 miles on it. Gas was about $1.239 and it gets 30-38 mpg. We still have this car and it has over 141,000 miles. It is the one that had all the car trouble a while back where I thought the dealership blew me off when I thought they should have covered the towing because they didn't fix the starting problem for me the first time and they said the starter wasn't broken so I had to pay the towing. I did end up complaining and it paid off: I received a check for $110 from the dealership this week.
On October 31, 2001 we bought a new forest green Mazda MPV for $24,134.15 with 25 miles on it. We donated the Plymoth; it had 144,079 miles on it. Gas was about $.979 and we got 18-24 mpg.
The MPV flat-lined on June 11th, 2008 with 147,517 miles on it. It would have needed a new transmission to bring it back to life. On June 12th, we bought a new orange 5-speed Honda Fit for $17,403. At my first fill-up gas was $3.879 and I'm getting 32-38 mpg. The MPV was also donated to Mellwood on July 1st and I still need to turn in the plates then cancel the insurance for it.
2 weeks ago
3 comments:
Wow - quite a car history. My car does around 40 miles per gallon but nowadays in the UK it can cost over £90 to fill up. Thats US$180. Gas prices are getting mad.
And hiya - Michele lsent me here today!
I've been looking very closely at the Honda Fit in case we need to buy a second car (depends on which way work goes in the next year or so...things are changing by the day, it seems.)
It's a rockin' car, and I can see myself being very happy with a Honda stick back in my hand. (My second car was a red Civic Si. Bought it new in 1990 and sold it two years later when we got married and decided my wife's four-door Sentra was a more reasonable, sober alternative for a young, married couple.
I still miss that car. Sigh...
You forgot to mention that in July of 1994, while we lived in Clinton, MD, a tornado ripped through our yard causing a LARGE tree branch to crash through the roof of our maroon Voyager. It was the one of the first tornados in the Washington area in years. Since then, they've become regular occurrences.
After we got the car back from the shop, it seemed like it may have come back as a slightly different shade of maroon.
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