I’m not a person who gets attached to things – I have spent a great deal of effort trying to free myself from the tyranny of stuff, to make my household easier to maintain, enjoy and, if necessary, uproot. There were really only two pieces of furniture that HAD to make the move to Atlanta: My grandmother’s awesome spice cabinet and the Swedish-design kitchen table the husband and I bought before we were even married (the table isn’t so much an emotional attachment as an awesomeness attachment – it’s extendable via two inserts that stay underneath the table until you gently pull the two ends out, revealing a six-top in place of the previous four-top).
So I’m as surprised as everyone else to find myself unwilling to give up my nearly-11-year-old car, Pica.
I find myself comparing him to an old pair of jeans: I slip into his seat and everything just feels right.
He’s only got a little over 80,000 miles on him, which I like to imagine makes him a tween in car mileage years. And he had some tween problems this summer: We just paid an enormous amount of money for a new AC compressor (I would argue that making it through 10.5 brutal Southern summers is enough for one poor little compressor) and new bushings, among a couple of other minor fixes.
It was a bill that was high enough to justify keeping him for at least another 8 months. Or so goes my argument.
If (when) I have to buy another car, I’ll buy another Mini. They’re the perfect size for driving around Atlanta, and they’re laughably nimble in parking garages.
They’re also super fun to drive.
Pica’s biggest negative in the city is his six-gear manual transmission. He rarely sees the interstate anymore, meaning that the short slog to work involves shifting from first, second and third, back to neutral for the next red light, then repeating. I don’t mind, really, but he’s probably going to work his way through a clutch at some point, and real transmission problems could signal the end of arguable financial benefits to keeping him.
Of course, I’m also averaging less than 50 miles a week, given my extremely short commute and the weekend walkability of our neighborhood. It somehow seems stupid to trade him in for something newer that will travel less than an average of 250 miles a month, the occasional road trip not included.
Although his interior is in great shape (the second rule of Mini Club is you never eat or drink in your Mini), save for a few mysterious bumps and scratches on the glove compartment door (get your act together, rogue passengers), his rear trunk emblem has started to flake. I think it’s quite fetching, like a cool scar, so it stays. Also, we all know that it’s bad luck to start fixing small cosmetic details on a really old car.
Face it: new upholstery = new water pump. Science.
So, Pica stays in the picture. For now, and for the foreseeable future in which I keep coming up with valid let’s-keep-him arguments.
You’ll pry his keys from my still-warm yet extremely sad fingers.
Entirely Adequate 