Ode to Tercelito

While I was on my mission, my parents probably made the best car buying decision they've ever made by getting this 1995 Toyota Tercel. When I came home it was given to me and I took over the payments and paid off the balance, thus making it THE CAR Stephen and I had when we got married in June 2001.

See, not a bad looking ride right?Little did I know, that car's membership in our family would last quite awhile and an unusual attachment by my husband (though he will deny it) to this car would develop. He thought this car was great--and I don't disagree. We've changed it's oil and bought it new tires and had one other minor repair in the YEARS we've owned it. That's it.

It has been dependable to say the least. And one of the things that I love MOST about my husband is his lack of vanity--he could care less that it's appearance over the years deteriorated to shabby--it was still getting 40 miles a gallon and it was Summer of 2008 when gas was over $4.00 a gallon--it was practically making us money!

In December 2001 we were driving it to Colorado for a skiing vacation at Christmas when it fell victim to a 4 car collision and was "totaled"--so what? We thought the damages were minor, bought it back salvage from the insurance company and paid less than our settlement to get it fixed and pocketed the remaining cash--we LOVED this car!

Our plan was always to trade it in when we upgraded to a family van but as luck would have it, 4 days prior to having Sam we were in an accident in our other car and it was totaled beyond repair and the Tercelito was spared.
The teenagers in our congregation at church wouldn't be caught dead owning his car (yes we had a family tease their kids that they'd bought it for their teenagers to drive and they were mortified!) and he was recognized by our friends simply by his car.

But the time had come, a program in our state was trying to get older more polluting vehicles off the road and we qualified for a sizable voucher towards the purchase of a new-er car and we had to do it--we wouldn't get $500 as a trade in for this car.

Stephen dragged his feet-there was NOTHING wrong mechanically with this car--it still ran great. And look at this:

YUP! We'd gotten it to go: 240, 672 miles!!

Sure the driver side door handle was broken and required a "special touch" to get into it.


Sure the paint was two toned where the sun had bleached it and the repaired part was looking better than the rest.

Sure we'd lost 3 of the wheel covers over the course of owning it and just took the 4th one off to make it look uniform--it wasn't worth it to replace them (though we had a neighbor joke he'd get them for him for Christmas one year)

Sure it leaked oil so we didn't dare park it anywhere but the street--which our neighbors LOVED I'm sure.

BUT we subscribe to the principle--wear it out, eat it up, make it do or do without. I think it really HURT Stephen to give up a car that didn't need replacing but the voucher program wouldn't last forever and we couldn't pass up the opportunity....

So late last month we said our good byes to TERCELITO and said hello to this little number:


A gold, 2009 Toyota (hey our last one went 240 thousand miles--we plan to do it again!) Corolla. Stephen is getting used to it I think. It does have a working door handle and a CD player (a bonus) it has a lot of life left in it.

And the kids like it too--the day after we bought it. Sam was riding home from church with dad and said, "Dad, I like your car....the furniture is fuzzy!" what more can we say? I'm thrilled!!