The Civic Wagon
was a secondary replacement car, purchased at the same time as
the Justy. It cost $900 cash, ran pretty well, looked funky, and
could carry a bunch of stuff, plus the seats folded down in about
23 different configurations, aaand it had a cool pop-up vent in
the center of the dash.
And then I took it to RenCen Mechanical, and damned if they
didn't tell me it needed a heaping pile of suspension work to
replace broken and worn components. An estimate for everything
it needed, including a timing belt change (just in case), came
to $1400. Ouch. Again this is a lesson to have used cars checked
more thoroughly before buying them. (Since I bought the Civic
and Justy at about the same time, I was unable to learn said lesson
in time to help the second purchase.)
In
advance of the yearly Easter trip to see Piet Foster and Cheryl
Davidson in NYC, I managed to get the tailgate opened, then bought
new tires for the front. The car did great on the trip, but coming
back through Pennsylvania, some bumhead had a wreck in the snow
about 5 miles ahead of us, blocking the highway completely. We
and about 200 other poor bastards sat out on the highway for a
full 18 hours, watching the snow pile up around us. By the end
of it, there were about 18 inches of snow on the road. PennDOT
dug us out at 7:40am the next morning (we'd stopped at 2:30pm),
and we drove the rest of the way home. It's actually fortunate
we took the Civic, because that meant we could fold one of the
front seats flat to make a short area to sleep in. (It would have
been even more comfortable if there hadn't been a bunch of swag
from Ikea in the back.)
The Civic also sold at the same time as the Justy (December, 1997), for $500.
It had burned oil since we got it, most likely due to cylinder bore wear, and
thus needed a ring job. An expensive proposition, even if I'd been able to do
the work myself. Still, I'm fairly sure it will run another year, so long as
the gentleman who bought it keeps the oil up.