My Car Committed Suicide

For those of you who don’t know, I drive a 1995 Toyota Celica. I like my car an awfully lot, due to its wide range of assets: Distinctive and fun without being flashy or extravagant. Handles like a dream, gets excellent gas mileage. Affordable, reliable. Red. Has a sunroof. And a respectable sound system.

It is also the first car that I ever chose for myself, which is a big step in any person’s life. The transition from parental hand-me-down cars or great-deal-from-Aunt-Fanny cars to This Is Mine cars is a substantial point in a person’s life.

And finally, I suspect that like my car because I have spent so much time in it. Since purchasing the Celica (used) in 1999, I have for a variety of reasons added 140,000 miles to its odometer. You become quite friendly with a vehicle in which you spend that much time, especially if you liked it a lot to begin with.

Here is a picture of my car (well, actually, one just like it) shortly after its birth:

Obviously, it no longer looks quite like that. You try jogging 192,000 miles and see how your personal aesthetic is affected. It does, however, look darn good for a car of its age and experience. The door-ding gnomes and rust monkeys have been relatively kind, and the interior is pretty decent, so it doesn’t feel terribly old.

At least not to me. Apparently the car and I have differing opinions about its reasonable life span. I see it as a car that can last me about one more year before I send it to live on a farm where it can play with other cars. Yesterday I discovered that the car is maybe a little anxious to move to the proverbial farm. I discovered this when, after leaving it parked on the slightly inclined street in front of my mom's house, I returned to find this:

My first thought was, “Oh dear God, I’ve killed my car.” I had obviously a) left it in neutral and b) neglected to put on the parking brake, a classic moment of catastrophic double stupidity. Such moments annually leave countless rednecks dead or injured. In my case, I had killed my car.

And then I (carefully) peered inside and checked the parking brake:

You’ll notice that said brake is engaged. Yes, I did leave the car in neutral (a 1-in-50 negligence), but expecting the parking brake to function is not too unreasonable and certainly not automocidal. The only possible conclusion: My car had tried to kill itself. Apparently, the ancient, beloved, road-weary vehicle had grown tired of the organ transplants, the ventilator, the life support, and the increasingly ineffective cosmetic surgery. The love of an owner was no longer sufficient reason to live. It saw its chance for freedom, disregarded its own parking brake, and coasted silently into the void.

And it was no small void, either:

(It is worth noting that this is a very steep angle, and seeing any vehicle on such a sharp incline is disorienting – almost troubling – in the same way that, say, a dog wearing pants would be. The mind is not trained to accept object A in situation B.)

See? Very disconcerting. And it's not even your car.

The tow truck arrived, the corpse was extracted, and found to be damaged thusly:

While not bad considering the gut-wrenching angle of impact, on such an old car these were fatal wounds. The semi-friendly people at Progressive duly informed me that the suicidal vehicle was totaled.

I am a little hurt by the whole episode, as I hadn’t realized that the simple pleasure of transporting me from here to there was no longer sufficient reason for my car to want to continue living. But I have to realize that it’s not about me. This is a cry for help, a desperate plea for attention. And I will be the provider of that attention. I’m not ready to let my old friend go into that good night, gently or otherwise. Total loss be damned, I’m going to take the insurance money and patch up the Celica. I shall raise it from the dead and show it that life still has joy and meaning. There are beautiful country roads yet to be discovered, perfect downshifts yet to be experienced, hairpins yet to be negotiated. Don’t worry, little car, I’m here for you! We’re all here for you, and we love you!