Really, they are when you come down to it.

Who among us couldn’t use a little body work, a new paint job, rolling back the odometer a few thousand miles, or just a little tune up? Used cars cost you lots of money, but they have lovable quirks that make you love them all the more.

This popped to mind as I was driving between work and school earlier, for I heard a commercial for a used car information center on the radio that made the inverse statement–that used cars are like people. But I have a fun story to tell about used cars, and it applies with things that swirl around me lately. [And probably not what some of you are thinking ... because I don't tell all my good stories online, not even to my local friends.]

I remember when Mom and I went to go car-shopping for me when I was a senior in high school. Mind you, I had a perfectly good vehicle in my 1986 Nissan truck. It wasn’t everything I wanted in a vehicle, but hey, it ran well and got nearly 30 mpg on the highway. When I was a poor high schooler away from home, that meant a lot! But my grandmother wanted to buy me a “new” truck, so off we went …
I wanted to stick with a truck, preferably a Nissan. Why? They’re bloody reliable. Mine has turned out to be so: I got it at a skosh under 30,000 miles, and I’m somewhere above 115,000 as of this writing. [That's 85,000 miles in about five years. Not an earth-shattering number, but when you consider it was at 70,000 total miles [42,000 of which I'd logged myself] after about 20 months of ownership…] I wanted a V6 with four-wheel drive. Mom talked me down to a 2WD, mainly because of insurance costs. I still wanted the V6, because my old truck was really underpowered.

Then I drove the truck I now drive … with the old Nissan 240SX engine in it. 152 hp … wow. So I drove it and looked under the hood. I found the one thing wrong with it: where it had been wrecked in the past. I found the bondo lines … and it was funny to see the salesman’s face when he told me, “It’s been wrecked.” I said, “Yep, left front quarter panel … what did you have to repair?” He told me. It was cool.

We’re all like that … better than we appear, worse than we’d like to be, but all with our own little bondo lines.