I’d never done anything to impress my car mechanic until earlier this month, when I brought my 1997 Subaru Legacy in for an oil change.
“Two hundred thousand miles!” my mechanic cheered. “Nice!”
“Wow!” his assistant cried. “That’s awesome!”
They were so excited that for a moment I wondered whether taking your car to the shop after hitting 200,000 miles is the equivalent of celebrating your birthday at a restaurant. Would the staff sing, and bring me a cake with 200,000 candles on it? I appreciated their enthusiasm, which stood in marked contrast to the reaction of my parents, who had politely inquired about the Subaru’s mileage when I saw them over July 4th.
“How many miles does that car have now?” my dad asked.
“Ummm, 199,000,” I said.
“One hundred and ninety-nine thousand!” my dad exclaimed.
“Oh my gosh!” my mom said.
“We’ve never had a car with 199,000 miles on it,” my dad said.
Which came as a shock to me, as we spent much of my childhood driving around in old station wagons that were held together with duct tape. But maybe those cars weren’t good enough to reach 200,000 miles. Maybe they were like my old Ford Escort, which died not too long after reaching 150,000 miles.
Prior to the death of the Ford, I’d had the following conversation with my father:
“How many miles does that car have on it?” he’d asked.
“Ummm, about 150,000,” I said.
“You might want to think about getting another car,” he said.
“But I like this one,” I said.
And I did. I know it’s hard to believe, but I really liked that Ford. I’d had it in college, Alabama and upstate New York, and I enjoyed looking at it, and thinking about all of the places I’d been. I even used to refer to that Ford as “The Trusty Ford.”
“I know you like that car,” my dad said. “But you should remember: The car is not your friend.”
I learned that soon enough, while driving to Tarrytown to pick up the MetroNorth to New York City. I parked my car, got out, noticed I had parked in the wrong lot, got back in, and turned the key in the ignition. Instead of a quiet hum, there was a horrible crunching noise; it sounded like the Ford was trying to regurgitate a pile of broken glass. I turned off the car and called AAA. The Ford was towed to a nearby garage, where it took the sadistic mechanics who worked there almost a week to look under the hood and tell me the engine had blown. “Hmmm,” I said. “So that’s pretty much unfixable, right?”
“You could fix it if you wanted to,” the mechanic said. “But I don’t know why you’d want to.”
He roared with laughter, and I understood that my father had been correct: The Ford was not my friend. And yet even as I realized this, I couldn’t stop thinking of the Ford in human terms. I wondered why the Ford had turned on me. Was it revenge, for a crime I didn’t even remember committing? Had I pushed the Ford too hard? Or was it simply aged and sick?
After the Ford died, my parents were kind enough to give me their old Subaru, which had about 113,000 miles on it.
My relationship with the Subaru isn’t as warm as my relationship with the Ford. I guess you could say that I’ve learned not to trust my car, to regard it with a measure of suspicion. But now that I’ve hit 200,000 miles, I’m torn between two impulses. On the one hand, the Subaru has served me well, and so maybe I should get a new car now, before I end up on the side of the road with a blown head gasket. On the other hand, I’d kind of like to keep driving this car, and see just how many miles I can accrue.
Right now, the latter impulse appears to be winning out. I’ve never liked buying things, and I’m not much of a car person — I don’t yearn for a newer car, or a nicer car; I don’t care if the Subaru has rust on it, or is covered with dust, or lacks nifty accoutrements, such as a CD player or remote-control locks. Then there’s the fact that my friends are full of encouragement. “My sister has a Subaru,” one friend said. “It’s got 230,000 miles on it. She thinks she can get to 300,000.” “You should be able to get to 250,000 miles, easy,” another friend said.
The feedback was so positive, it almost lulled me into thinking of the Subaru as my friend. “What a good car this is,” I thought, while driving home from Lake Luzerne. “I’m going to drive it forever.”
Moments later, the check engine light flicked on, and I felt betrayed. “You cars are all the same,” I told the Subaru. But when I brought the Subaru to my mechanic, he muttered something about an “evaporative leak,” fiddled around and made the check engine light shut off, advised me to call him if it went on again, and sent me away without charge.
So now I feel like I’ve been given a new lease on life.
I’m wondering: Just how far can an old Subaru go, anyway?
The question feels a little bit like a dare.
And I’ve always had a hard time resisting those.
Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section.
