Nothing lasts forever. It’s a cruel part of life but your favorite pet, your beloved car, and the love of your life are not eternal. Sometimes, saying goodbye is not easy and you’re left digging through memories and thoughts. You never know how attached you’ll get to a few thousand pounds of metal, plastic, rubber, and glass. Then, you’ll sell a beloved car and you’ll feel weird about it. How hard was it to say goodbye to a car you loved?
Over the weekend I said goodbye to a car I considered to be one of the best used car purchases I’ve ever made. Back in 2021 when I worked at the old site, I bought a 2005 Volkswagen Touareg VR6. I was inspired by David Tracy’s adventures in the Lexus LX 470 that he owned for a sliver of time, and wanted to replicate the same experience on a fraction of the budget.
The Touareg I bought was full of problems, from crash damage to bald tires, a cracked windshield, and rust, but the bones were good.
The seller told me the vehicle “hesitated” at 50 mph, but the real issue wasn’t hard to figure out. Sometimes it shifted into 3rd gear with a hard slam. Diagnosis and research later revealed a bad transmission valve body, a common issue with early model-year Touaregs. The part alone would have cost me about half of what I paid for the SUV, so I decided to ignore it. Instead, I put on some new tires, fixed what crash damage I could, and then hit the road. I expected this broken Volkswagen SUV, a model already known for its unreliability, to let me down.
Amazingly, the Touareg then defied my expectations by driving nearly 20,000 miles. I drove it across the country to pick up my Honda Beat outside of Seattle. I then drove it the other way across the country to pick up a Suzuki Every at port in Baltimore. Then, I drove as far north as I could get into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to pick up my U-Haul CT13 project. The Touareg, which I named Sophia, later took on three Gambler 500 endurance rallies, rescued broken-down cars, towed motorcycles, and did all of the sorts of fleet work I was no longer willing to subject my Smarts to.
To be clear, the Touareg was objectively a crapbox. All four shocks were well past their expiration date. Even small bumps caused so much bouncing that my tools would get airtime. The only way to drive my Touareg was with a light foot because moderate to heavy acceleration caused violent shifting behavior. I couldn’t lock the doors because the security system was wonky. The transmission pan rusted out. The headliner began to fail, water got in through rust holes, and the unibody had a crumple from whatever happened in the past. There were so many problems with this Touareg that anyone else might have scrapped it, but I worked around its quirks and kept it on the road.
During my ownership, new issues cropped up. The power steering eventually became heavy. I never finished the diagnosis, but the remaining culprits were each as expensive as a new transmission valve body. Then I took the SUV off-roading with David Tracy in Michigan, where the SUV developed a power steering leak and a weak linkage. The fuel tank also sprang a leak, another known Touareg issue.
Recently, I started looking into fixing all of this stuff. Just the parts alone would have been able to buy me a decent Touareg V8. Why would I spend more than that to keep a base model, crashed, and rust bucket Touareg roadworthy? I made the hard decision to say goodbye to Sophia. Last night I sold her for $1,000. The sale was swift, with someone scooping it up only 2 hours after I posted it. Maybe I should have raised the price…
I don’t know why it was so hard seeing the Touareg drive away. It’s just a broken German SUV. Maybe it’s because I make a lot of my decisions based on emotion and memories. That SUV was beaten, but never wanted to quit. It drove across the country and back, then asked for more adventures. It towed through the Rockies, survived Washington D.C. traffic, and trials by Gambler 500. But, I fought my feelings and sent it to a new home. Godspeed, Sophia.
How about you? Are there any cars that made you tear up after you sold them? How hard is it to say goodbye to a car?
My first car bought at 15 years old, a 1966 Chevy II Nova. 20 something me turned it into a drag race car rollcage and all. Which made no sense for 30 something me with kids to have. So it was sold. Luckily 50 something me bought an all original unmodified 1967 Chevy II Nova now. I still miss the first one, I’ve tracked down it over the years.
“Which Of Your Cars Were Hardest To Say Goodbye To?”
Literally and logistically speaking, that would be my 91’ Protege.
My little gray ‘Mighty Mouse’.
It died about halfway between SLC and OKC somewhere in NM.
I was eighteen, with maybe three hundred dollars to my name, moving to a new city with everything I owned packed in it. Pre cell phone era…
I had BMW 135i manual. In red, with sunroof, and no iDrive. It was basically my dream car. It still is…… we were living overseas, I owed waaay too much money on it to import it back to New Zealand, we had a baby on the way, I had to sell it. I miss it. Strangely I also miss my second car a JDM 1993 Toyota Carina ED manual – and even more weirdly I miss my Ford Mondeo Zetec manual again – it was just a standard family liftback, there was nothing special about it all.
The i135 is so legit! Sorry it got away 🙁 Truly cool small German muscle cars IMO
Yeah it was, I remember sitting at the lights and some dude in a V8 Holden Commodore went to drag me, so I let him have it heh. Only really dumb thing I ever did in that car
1987 Daytona Shelby Z. 2.2 turbo intercooled five speed. Very nice condition with T tops and the air bladder seats. In the late 90s manual boost controller on it with a turbo back , 2 1/2 inch exhaust. The turbo eventually went on it, and I traded it in a 1997 dual cam, five speed neon. Had 1999 me spent a little more time on the Internet I could’ve easily changed and upgraded the turbo with a couple other things, and had a beast… And a classic.!!
1996 NA Mazda Millenia in Merlot Mica was my first car, and one that I had spent years wrenching on to get it to finally pass emissions. 6 months after that, I took it for regular service at the place I’d gone for years, and the new mechanic somehow scored the shit out of the #3 cylinder wall. He offered to buy me out of the car doors get me a new engine, but having had that engine remached and rebuilt years earlier, it was unlikely that there were any better condition engines out there than mine. He gave me a dollar for every mile on the car: 221,939, and I watched it get trucked away to a dismantler.
I have had 10 cars since then (including a supercharged millenia) and would happily give most of them up to have that first millenia again. I loved that car, and I’m so glad I got to enjoy those last 6 months with it.
I have avoided this problem largely by not getting rid of cars. I own 6 cars at the moment, and those are 6 of the 8 I’ve ever owned. Of the two I did pass on, the one I miss is my ‘96 Infiniti G20t, a great little sport sedan. I sold it at a friend price to one of my best friends, a non-car-person getting a 10-year PhD in Santa Cruz who eventually wanted to have a car. After 3-4 years he traded it in to the state when they were doing that cash-for-clunkers program. I’ve told him that I wished he’d have given me a heads-up so I could buy it back, but realistically there was no way I’d have done that.
1930 Model A, deluxe business coupe with a rumble seat. You could fix it with a flathead screw driver and a pair of pliers. I drove it regularly, used it in parades, and used it to get parts for my POS 1991 Ford Explorer that starting falling apart as soon as the warranty was done. I sold the A because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time (long story) but regretted ever since. I should have kept it and got rid of the wife instead.
1991 Sentra SE-R, white, sunroof, no A/C or cruise control–my first new car. Traded it and a ’90 GMT400 Cheyenne (base model) for a custom-ordered ’97 Silverado that would probably be #2 on my list.
I’ve avoided this feeling about my own SE-R, bought new in 1993, by still having it. I drive it very little but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it.
1991 Trooper. One of my few regrets in life. Moved to Europe for two years, and just couldn’t figure out how to keep it, for some reason.
1995 Porsche 911, my first ‘real’ track car. Roll cage, amazing suspension, just a dream to drive. I learned so much. I was very aware of the cost to fix transmission or engine stuff was more than the ‘value’ of the car.
Sadly, I wrecked the car at VIR five years ago. It was mostly body damage, I had a choice to buy the salvage or to let it go. I thought I could fix the car well below the estimate – as long as nothing was wrong with the motor or transmission.
The “Boss” made it clear that I needed to get it fixed for the payout or less… or else. The Sword of Damocles feeling of ‘will I have to fix it?’ may have left, but I miss that car.
As a VW fan who longed for a Porsche, I winced when I read this one. I hope that it is some consolation that its departure was instigated while it was being driven in earnest and not at the hands of some texting idiot
Our of the 60+ cars I’ve had, only one has returned home after years away. I bought an ’01 Saab 9-5 Aero sedan, with manual gearbox and vented seats, new in late 2001. For 11 years, the car took me to all four corners of the US — 45 states and into Canada. I had all kinds of excellent adventures with the car, plus lots of day-to-day driving for work. I decided one day, at the 11-year mark, that it was time for the car to go, with 325k miles on the odometer. Found a buyer for it quickly, as the buyer’s dream car as a teenager. From there, I kept buying and trying different things (a couple Audis, two Lexus LS400s, more Saabs, a GTI, and some other toys; I was never was able to find anything quite like that Aero.
Fast forward a handful of years, the previous owner texted me and wanted to know if I was interested in buying the car back… then he ghosted me for three or four more years. Finally, a buddy of mine saw it parked outside a barn about 25 minutes away, in the next county over. I went over, left my business card under the wiper, and the phone rang that night, with the second owner finally willing to let the car come back home.
I bought that Aero back nearly ten years after I sold it, with surprisingly few miles added in all that time – less than 20k miles. It was, however, quite a bit worse for wear, with plenty of neglect inflicted in the way of hail damage, minor body damage, corroded electrical connectors, minor wiring damage from a mouse, lots of dirt and plenty of gravel road rust underneath. Last summer and fall, after lots of wrenching and lots of bits sourced and replaced, I put my old 9-5 Aero back on the road last fall.
It’s back in my daily car rotation, and still one of my favorite cars to pile on the miles at speed, regardless of season. There’s already been several 500-1000+ mile days in the saddle since putting it back in service, with over 15k miles driven in the past 4-5 months. I’ll continue to get this car sorted, and don’t plan on selling it again. I expect the car to blow past the 400k mile mark in the next two years, and plan to keep on going from there.
Still search on occasion for my old 9-3. I’m happy to see another Saab is living on, I’ve owned 3. Fever dream purchase is to somehow get a second gen 9-5 Sportcombi here…
Second-gen, like 2010-11, or the ’06-09 wagons? Another dozen years to wait for one of the dozen or so of the 2010-11 prototypes made, but ’06-09 wagons are out there, just a matter of finding a decent one.
it would be one of the 2011 9-5 wagon prototypes, so their were some running around metro Detroit (Saabs last offices were in Royal Oak, MI). Some banter that the body in whites or even prototype cars survived, lore has it some did in the US, but yeah 25 year rule is probably how it’s going to go for me :-/
This is a great story Paul! I wish we could post pics.
Great story! Long may you run.
And they say you can’t go home again. Glad you got it back—and even better are back in the saddle.
Cheers!
2008 Saab 9-3 Aero Sportcombi XWD. On paper it was lame, but it just did all the things right…
Test drive a manual one of those, regretted not buying it.
Their out there still, albeit aging out and becoming needy children as they age… Mine was the manual, now I miss it even more…
TurboX? Or ‘just; an Aero? The TX combi/MT is pretty grail-like.
I have an ’08 Combi, as well–2.0 with manual. I waited a couple years to be able to buy it from the previous owner.
Easily my SVT Contour. I sold it after aiming to clean it up and sell it, and failing miserably. I already had my 540I6, and had no place to keep the SVT. As the transport was pulling away, I thought “my God, I’ve sold the wrong one.” Time painfully proved that assessment to be spot on.
Now, of course, I also regret selling my Mazda6 because 8 months after I bought its replacement, the pandemic hit and I had my new-to-me car sitting in the driveway doing nothing. The Mazda could have done that cheaper.
My 1997 Honda Prelude. I met a bunch of great people going to Prelude meets, an even entered it at HIN in support of a Prelude club. Loved the way it looked, the way it drove, and the sound it made when VTEC kicked in. Hated to see it go, but I didn’t need two cars anymore.
I haven’t gotten rid of too many cars, so the bar is fairly low. But the one that was the hardest was the 2014 Fusion 6-speed. It wasn’t like an amazing sports car or anything, but a solid family sedan that did all the kid hauling duties it was asked, while also (thanks to the stick shift) being an entertaining drive. The fact that it was a unicorn made what otherwise would’ve been an unremarkable vehicle to own, feel just a little special.
These are rare here into US. If they had put that manual in the Fusion Sport hmmmm…
Very rare. Only 1,449 manual Fusions were sold in 2014, 0.47% of the total that year.
Did not know it was that rare, wow! How did you even find one?
Basically luck. I was looking to get a car in late-2014, not necessarily new, and heard the manual Fusions were dead for 2015. I started looking and oddly enough there were 8(!) manual Fusions available in my area. One of which was equipped exactly the way I wanted, so I just jumped at it.
I tend to hang onto cars till the bitter end so its not so hard to say goodbye.
My first car.. 1980 Ford Escort, the euro one. Never had another car since that’s matched the physical, mechanical feeling it had to drive. Moving to the US meant I couldn’t bring it, sold it to a friend and bought a Bullitt when I landed instead.
A 76 VW van. 2.0l, FI, 4 speed. Red with a white roof.
This car took got me out into the world and the start of a real life on my own. I loved rambling down the highway in it, easily moving along with the flat 4 waffling away in the rear. Window down, cruising.
I removed the single bench seat in the back that it came with, added a folding platform for a futon mattress and some basic camping gear. I lived out of it for most of a year while finding my love of travel by vehicle and my place in the world.
It was good enough that I more or less forget about it’s faults, like the fact that it had points that would reliably leave me stranded every 3k miles, or that interior heat was mostly a dream unless actually running down the highway.
I found it in Wisconsin and eventually moved to the Florida Keys. Road salt did a job on the bottom and sea salt began to eat it away from the top and it was clear that the two rust monsters would meet in the middle. I needed a better car that would take me daily to a new, professional job and I took the easy way out, buying a ’95 Probe GT.
The Probe was awesome in it’s own right and it was easily the newest, nicest car I had owned up to that time, but in hindsight I should have taken that same money and fixed the van.
I had a 2006 Dodge Magnum RT in Inferno Red that was my favorite car I’ve ever owned. It wasn’t the most reliable or the most economical but it was very practical and extremely fun. It was my daily driver for 14 years and I loved every minute of it.
My Magnum took me, my wife and 2 daughters from Illinois to the east coast, west coast, north and south. There were so many memories made in that fast wagon that even my kids missed it when it was gone. The kids and I would go to car shows with other LX enthusiasts, change all 16 spark plugs together and switch from summer wheels and tires to winter wheels and tires and back again every year.
Eventually it just got to be too expensive to maintain. In the wintertime, either because of winter gas, my lead foot or love of doing donuts in the snow, I regularly got between 9 and 10 mpg and that was using the recommended 89 octane. There were front suspension components that had to be replaced every 30,000 to 40,000 miles when you heard the dreaded “CLUNK”. All of my blend door motors died and were replaced and were needing to be replaced again when I sold her. Winter was coming and the driver side vents only blew cold while the passenger side vents only blew fire.
The Magnum still looked great (to me) when I let her go. I thought the Magnum was like no other car on the road even though a lot of people didn’t like the look and I heard a lot of “driving a hearse” jokes. But nobody could put a damper on how much I loved that car and I still miss her today.
Appropriately for a response to an article by Mercedes, it was my 2005 Smart Roadster Coupe. Traded in for a 2007 Saab 9-3 Sportwagon because you can’t fit a family in a Smart. Looking back, I should have taken the temporary financial hit and bought the Saab while keeping the Smart. I had worried that with a stressy twin spark turbo’d Mercedes Benz engine it would be a maintenance nightmare but it cost me about £140 per year in servicing from a local independent Smart specialist (Surrey Smart Centre) and that was it. The Saab was a real Friday afternoon car by comparison. I could live with the not particularly smooth robot manual shifting by just applying my right foot to the bulkhead and pulling the paddles for an exhilarating drive every time I popped to the shops or drove to the station. I often look online to see if I can find one the same and for 17 years I have kept a scale model of it on my desk at work. Definitely the one car I should never have said goodbye to.
I cannot wait to import a Smart Roadster. I even tried to buy the one currently at the Lane Motor Museum. Maybe one day you’ll find yours again! 🙂
1984 Honda Prelude 5-speed second generation. My first new car, purchased as a “reward” for finishing grad school and getting a decent job. A week after I bought it, my girlfriend (now wife) and I took it on a 1500 mile trip to Crater Lake in Oregon up US-101. I kept the car for 10 years and 141K miles and I don’t remember any significant maintenance beyond a clutch around 100K.
It wasn’t fast, but it handled so well and was a wonderful road trip car. It had an incredibly low hood – thanks to the double-wishbone front suspension – a huge greenhouse, and a classic wedge shape (the Honda designer of this generation Prelude went on to style the original NSX).
I only sold it because we had our daughter and there was just no way to fit a car seat into the back: there wasn’t enough clearance between the heavily bolstered front seats and the door frame to even get a seat into the car.
I’ve only ever been attached to one car, my 1972 Super Beetle I’ve had since I was 11. September marks 20 years with that car, and it isn’t going anywhere.
I was sad to see my first daily driver go. I loved the GTI when I was a teenager and we even test drove one before I got my permit. Tornado Red, plaid seats, six speed, two doors. I knew my folks wanted to buy me a newer car to daily drive, and figured maybe I could find a ~10 year old BMW or something for not a lot of money to have fun with. I had been on a school trip the week before my 16th birthday in 2009…and to my surprise, the same GTI we test drove was waiting for me when I got home. I loved that car, I always kept it spotless even when I was in college. I knew I was incredibly fortunate to have such a nice car at that age. I even took it out on track days with my dad, who had a 135i at the time. All of that was wiped out in 2015 by some old guy with bad eyesight driving a company car. Pulled right out of a side street and hit me, said he couldn’t see oncoming traffic because the sun was in his eyes and he didn’t see well. He admitted fault to the police which I appreciated, but KY is a no fault state. The car was totaled.
I replaced it with a 2012 CC (also manual) but it lost all compression on cylinder 1 in 2020 and I decided I was done with it. It was a cool looking car and all, but a big black sedan isn’t really “me.” Traded it in on a 2014 Sportwagen TDI (you guessed it, manual), in Tornado Red. It rides on the same MKV platform that my GTI did, and as soon as I took it for a test drive it reminded me of the GTI. Especially since it was already lowered, like my GTI was. It’s not quite a GTI, of course, but some new shocks and a mild tune should get me pretty damn close. And that’s literally my entire vehicle history.
1986 Carrera 911 with whale tail in ‘white gold’. Aircooled 911’s were going up in value and I decided to buy a house so needed the $ for a down payment. Paid 17k CAD in 2013 sold for 35k CAD in 2017. Would be worth more now but my house would be unaffordable to me now as it has doubled in value since 2017. It was definitely the right choice to sell. I since had a 2001 911 Carrera but it didn’t have the same magic so that is gone too but newer one is not very much missed.
I tend to use all my cars up to the point where I am quite happy to pass them on,but at the same time I never really like to sell them. The one that hurt the most was my Golf 2 I think. I loved to drive it,but it just became too small and I didn’t have space to store it. Actually,if I had storage space,I probably would’ve never sold anything..
2001 Mazda Protegé
It was a car that nudged one in the ribs, egged one on to have fun. Go hard into the corner, hit the apex, and come out quickly. It cornered flat, the steering was sublime, its compact dimensions made nipping through city traffic a breeze. Acceleration: not really, but the little 1.6L got points for trying. The brakes were nicely balanced, a firm pedal could dial in exactly the stopping needed. Drive it 8, 9, 10/10ths without fear of serious consequences. It was a driver’s car in the way that nothing I’ve ever owned before or after has been, but practical enough to be a daily.
Alas, corrosion had set in by the time it had come into my possession. A decade old Mazda in the salt belt will have that problem. I got 4 years and ~70,000km out of it for $3500. It had previously been an old guy’s commuter, but I’d like to think that its swan song was winding up to 6500rpm on the open road, finding corners to carve, taking a younger version of myself on the adventures of being young.
The Mazda3 I replaced it with is a better car. More reliable, more comfortable, a better cruiser, more adult. But there’s moments when one is cruising along with the windows down and one misses that nudge to the ribs. That playful nudge that says ‘Let’s drive.’
Well said.