Where my cars got their miles...

I drove up to NH today to help give a presentation. I got there a few minutes early, so I reclined my seat, opened the sunroof and relaxed a bit. This put me into a reflective mood and I began to consider that I have really only owned two cars in my life.

The first was a Toyota Tercel purchased new in 1983. I was in college at the time and I always lived close enough to walk to classes. Between bouts of schooling and afterwards, all the jobs I had were walking distance from where I lived. Pretty much all the miles on the Tercel were long trips or local errand-running. I commuted for about two months on a temporary job I had when I lived in Billerica and the job was in Newton. And then in 1997, we moved to the suburbs when my wife was pregnant with our first daughter. I used the Tercel to commute but soon got busted for not having an inspection sticker. It would have cost thousands of dollars to fix the myriad of problems this poor car had and it didn't seem worth it given the age (14 years) and mileage (144 thousand miles).

That year I selected a BMW 318Ti and junked the Tercel. This car has almost only been used for my daily commute into work. Most of the long trips have been in either my wife's car (which is larger) or in our SUV--which we pretty much only use for trips or big hauling jobs. The BMW still runs great, but at 102K it still has a long ways to go before matching the Tercel's utility.

ADDED: I found pictures of these two cars and scanned them...

I always seem to end up with a blue hatchback.