Thoroughly M&P.
My faithful 1993 fleet-white, bottom of the line, so base-model that it doesn’t even have a passenger-side mirror Nissan Sentra just passed 200,000 miles.
It still runs like a champ. The only major work I’ve ever had done on it is a repair of the front and rear seals when it was leaking oil. Oh yes, and a clutch cable. Actual quote from the repairman: “Sir, the car has 140,000 miles on it and the factory-original clutch. It’s time to replace the cable.”
This old beater (with the red streak on the front right fender where a red camaro creased it in a parking lot) has taken me everywhere. It made it down the entire East Coast from Maine to Alabama on dry axles. It’s carried me back and forth to Washington DC a dozen times. Utah, Colorado, the Great Lakes, New England, and a thousand shorter trips to Atlanta, Savannah, Gainesville, Nashville, Memphis, Suffolk. It has never let me down. It has always gotten me to my destination.
It’s never run hot, made funny noises, or shimmied uncontrollably. It has had a blowout or two, but those were my fault. One morning on the way to work, a car in front of me locked its brakes in the rain, trying to stop, skidded sideways, and I smashed full into its side. My poor car looked like an accordion (no one was hurt.) It cranked right back up after the accident report and gamely carried me to work.
It’s a real trooper, and it shows no signs of dying any time soon, in spite of the worn-out upholstery, the worn-through carpet, the dirt streaks, or the hubs that don’t match. It has a bedroll in the back seat, an atlas, a side-pocket stuffed with maps from everywhere, an ice-scraper, and an old tape player I put in there in 1998 when I lived in DC.
I have a portable CD player connected with a tape adapter. Led Zeppelin III, in case you wondered.
There are a couple of ginger beer bottles and a Skittles wrapper on the floorboard. I know the fuel gauge down to the half-millimeter of when I need to refill.
It will still easily break 90 without shaking, and it sips gas. I made the 400-mile trip from Savannah to Montgomery (with my girlfriend) with a quarter tank of gas left.
Three things hang from the mirror: a pine air freshener, a jade good-luck charm a Chinese friend brought me from her home village, and a perforated oyster shell from Tybee Island, Georgia.
This car has been more faithful than most people I’ve known over the last ten years. It’s taken me to concerts, to court, to work, to school, on dates, to be dumped, to secluded, romantic spots, and finally, at the end of everything, home. It starts cheerfully every morning, and without complaint, takes me where I need to go.
I don’t think I’ll trade it in when I get a new car. I don’t think I have the heart.
Happy 200,000th, you old piece of crap.