"Our Car"

Let me introduce you to Suki, aka Our Car:

We got Suki when I was pregnant with Zoe. We'd been doing the whole urban-hippie-with-a kid-and-no-car thing but reality hit when kid #2 came. We needed to be grown ups and we needed a car. Suki is a 1992 Suzuki Sidekick. We got her in 1995 and she had maybe 40,000 miles on her. We drove her back and forth from Seattle to Utah probably a dozen times and she was a good little car.

Suki has a few good stories:

The kids had a toy car that looked like Suki and they always called it "our car".

I parked "our car" in front of the daycare one day and when I came out a school bus had ripped her bumper off and the heavily tattooed busdriver proceded to rip me a knew one because I'd parked too close to the end of the street.

Just before heading out on vacation, as we were packing up the car, little Zoe excitedly pointed at the car and said, "Look! Look! I wrote my name on the car!" And she had. With a sharp rock.

But, like most old cars, Suki started needing more and more maintenance. After we'd driven the Utah desert one too many times in August without air conditioning we decided it was time for a new car so in 2003 we bought a Nissan Xterra. The Xterra would serve several important needs: home improvement hauling, road-trip taking, camping gear holding and long legged kid carrying (funny how those are only required about 10% of the time but that's a whole other blog entry about my silly husband and his love for big tires). Poor Suki sat there, parked for the most part, only to be used when her mommy (me) had a girl's night out.

Suki had a few problems (wiper fluid pump quit working and the radio broke) but I still loved her. She was easy to park, fun to shift and she was perky. Last year we put in a fancy new stereo (cd player and ipod port, even!), got her new tires, and she passed her emissions test with flying colors.

Then, last fall, she got gassy. And she puttered. And she died. (But she happily restarted, again and again, only to die when we stopped her, poor thing.)

We (unwisely?) took her to the place where we get tires and lube jobs and they diagnosed her problem. She needed a new air flow sensor and her model's sensor cost $900 and since we were not in the mood to pay that we parked her. All winter she sat, through snow storms and rain. She gathered moss and held our parking spot in front of the house.

Spring came and with that came a little extra cash (and my need to start driving again -- windows down, sunglasses on, hair blowing). Robert drove Suki, sputtering and killing, to the shop and they put in her new part. And new spark plugs, too. I drove her home. I petted her dash and I believe she purred at me. I was so glad to have her back.

Sadly, a few days later I drove her again and she puttered. She killed. She farted, oh so stinkily. Suki was still sick.

Back she went to the shop. They put in a new computer. They did other stuff. Finally, they threw up their hands and offered to tow her to a Suzuki dealer up in Everett. We told them we'd ease their pain and just take her back. They happily agreed, reimbursed what we paid them ($1300!) and now we need to decide if this is it for the poor little girl.

I'm a little torn. I like having a car that feels sort of like it's mine. I don't like the Xterra. It's pretty and fun to drive but it chugs gas and I need a booster seat to park or reverse it. I think we need a small car to commute to work (or suck it up and take the bus). I don't want to make car payments. Suki has new tires. And a new stereo. What to do? What to do?

I kind of want a Vespa like the good old days.