A New Car

A couple of years ago, Mrs. C.'s 1981 Toyota Tercel reached the point where it was no longer safe to drive due to body rust and expensive brake repairs. We have since gone with one car, our (formerly my) 1996 Honda Civic. It has not been without inconvenience, especially when I head down the highway to an RSCM Course or a trip Out East, leaving her to walk wherever she needs to go. Sundays are a weekly inconvenience; the transit buses do not run, and I must be dressed up for work (which precludes cycling), so I drive into town. She has Sundays off every other weekend, and is left without transportation.
Thus, she wanted a new car. There were further convincing reasons:

- Her parents are getting older and she is likely to need to drive down to visit them more frequently, perhaps on short notice. She is increasingly uncomfortable in driving the Civic on a long highway trip, or in the traffic of a major city.
- She thinks, rightly, that one could question the safety of driving to the RSCM Course with other people's children in a seventeen-year-old vehicle, one which lacks modern safety features.
- It has worked well for us to have two cars: one fairly new, the other quite a bit older. That way, we are not replacing two cars at once, or even in the same decade. The Civic remains in good condition and should suffice as a second car for many years - but it is time to add a newer car.
- She brought her Tercel into our marriage and never put my name on the title, nor did she permit me to drive it very much until we had been married twenty years or so and it was becoming an Old Car. It is time for her to have another car of her own.

Despite the way this may sound, I concur with the decision. It was incumbent upon me, however, to keep my mouth shut. I tend to be a Know-It-All. I always have, even in childhood when I would drive my teachers and parents to distraction. I am pleased to say that I mostly succeeded. Last week, we purchased a red 2013 Toyota Corolla. Although I was with her when she bought the car (and I ended up taking care of such details as getting a cashier's check from the bank and arranging for insurance), I said little and was careful to not disagree with anything she said. It helped that I was able to do so in all honesty, for I agree with her choice of vehicle. And (again), This Is Not My Car. It is hers.

Or (perhaps) ours; she put my name on the title along with hers. I suppose that means she intends to keep me around.

And she not only offers to let me drive it Out East this summer, she insists. I can drive it carefully and at varying speeds on the "blue highways" that I love, properly breaking it in (although they claim that cars no longer need such babying in their first few thousand miles), and be fully used to it before going to the RSCM Course later in the summer. I feel guilty about this; why should I have the pleasure of driving the New Car? But she does not view long road trips as a pleasure. Aside from necessary trips to see her parents, she intends to use the car strictly in town and for short day trips, which is how she used her old Tercel.

I will be fearful of putting the First Scratch on it, or getting the upholstery dirty. And I still love our Civic; I would rather drive it, on the whole. I continue to trust it implicitly on the highway, or in any circumstance.

But it will be fun to drive a New Car, for the first time in seventeen years.

And, very possibly, the last time. It occurred to both of us in the days following that this will probably be the last time we purchase an automobile, barring accidents. The Civic probably has another ten or fifteen years in it. By then, we will be retired (I hope!), and we can get by with just the Corolla. And by the time it wears out some time in the 2040's, we will be dead, or so old that we ought not to be driving.

That assumes that there will be fuel for motor vehicles, a proposition that I consider extremely doubtful over the long term.

In the meantime, I will enjoy the ride. Long automobile trips are among my favorite activities, right up there with playing the organ or singing. I love our Honda; I can see that I will love our Toyota as well. After I got home with it and parked it in the apartment parking lot, I repeatedly went to the bedroom window and looked out at it, all shiny and red and new. I am carefully reading the owner's manuals -- a stack of five books, not far short of a thousand pages. There is even a thick manual just for the sound system. I can remember the manual for my first car, a 1976 Civic - a little booklet of about twenty pages in broken English-from-Japanese. Times have changed.

They have indeed: the salesman was probably bemused with us, for he had to explain to us how to use a car key that has push buttons on it to open and lock the doors. He began talking about "bluetooth capability" until I gently observed that we do not have cell phones. "Oh," he said, at a loss for words. "Well, it is there if you ever get one."

It is a marvel to me to get behind the wheel of a car and drive, whether it is a simple trip down to the church on Sunday or a journey of a thousand miles. I am thankful to be living in such a time, thankful for the engineering of these vehicles -- I have been under the hood of the Civic enough to hold its design in high esteem, and I have no doubt that the new Toyota is equally fine. More complex, certainly; that worries me a little. I am thankful for the fossil fuel that undergirds all of this. What a magnificent gift it is from our Creator! There are responsibilities that accompany this or any gift, but it must begin with thanksgiving.