I've been meaning to eulogize the CRX, which we bid a fond farewell to last Thursday. We filled it with flowers, pushed it into the sea, and set it on fire. Well, okay, not really, we drove it up to Wakefield and sold it to some guys who run a junk car dealership that specializes in Hondas. The salesman who sold us our minivan put us in contact with these guys, and they were willing to take it for $500 sight unseen if it could get there under its own power. So Beth took one last drive in it, pushing it towards 75 on the highway, and Justin and I followed behind in the minivan. As it ended up, they gave us $700, which was better than I could've done either at the dealership or selling it myself, since its problems were many and varied. The only other option was to donate it for the tax deduction, but that wouldn't have realized anything until tax time next year, and I didn't want to wait that long.



We bought the CRX in the summer of 1990, after Beth's seven-year old Chevette had fallen apart to the point that you had to push it to get it to start. This was her car, so after years of driving the '80's equivalent of a Geo Metro, she was ready for something sporty. The Miata was probably the more attractive option, but I couldn't make myself fit behind the steering wheel, and the whole convertible thing was extremely impractical. We also looked at the Eclipse, the Isuzu whatever-it-was, and even a Mustang before settling on the CRX, which really was the best deal in that range, and our first Honda. She picked out the "Barbados Yellow", known as "the bumblebee", although the color probably only helped draw attention to her as she would blow past speed traps on the way to and from work.



Since it was only a two-seater, we never expected it to be the primary vehicle, but when my little Mazda 323 started showing its age, we ended up taking the CRX to Illinois three times in six months while dad was in the last stages of cancer. The seats were not designed for long trips. When Chloe was born, she could still schlep around in it after having a special seatbelt installed that didn't attach to the door, since there was no passenger-side airbag. But once Justin was due, the CRX's days were numbered, since you couldn't fit a driver and two kids into the car. We toyed with the idea of getting rid of it then, but we were still paying for the Accord we'd acquired before Chloe was born and didn't want to have two car payments, so we switched. I finally learned to drive a standard, and got used to a car where you sat four inches above the pavement with about a half-inch of headroom. I even subscribed to Super Street for a while, with the idea of fixing the car up a little, but nothing much ever came of that.



Just around the time I started driving it to Westwood every day and racking up the miles, the thing started to more problems. It was already 8 years old at that point, after all. Just before Justin was born, the timing belt broke and the car sat at Kraft's for three weeks while they did major surgery on it. After I took it over the clutch went, the alternator needed to be replaced, I got new tires. I went with snowtires, since it had always sucked in the snow, and they made a huge difference. The muffler rusted away a couple of times, rust started peeking out around the wheelwells, it was leaking oil, to the tune of a quart every two weeks, stuff like that. The Accord was long since paid off and I was still driving the thing around, since fixing it up was still cheaper than paying for a new car. But the logistics of having two cars of which one can't accomodate more than two people was getting more and more complicated with a family of four, and I despaired of it passing inspection next month. We had already started looking around, but when I hopped in the car two weeks ago and there was no heat because the blower had stopped working, it was time to let go.



Because Beth and I had both driven it quite a bit, and we'd had it for over 12 years, we were sorry to see it go, as were the kids since it was their only chance to get to ride in the front seat. But everybody likes the new Odyssey even better, so it'll be just a fond memory soon enough. These guys that bought it seemed to think most of its problems were minor and easily fixed, and they'd be able to turn it around pretty quickly. So now I'll have to look closely when I see a yellow CRX on the road to figure out whether its ours or not. Now I'm back to driving the Accord again, although now it's almost eight years old and has 125,000 miles on it, so who knows how much longer it will last. 2008 and the last payment on the Odyssey seems a long time to keep the Accord patched together, but it has a lot of new parts thanks to Beth smashing it up a couple of times, so I remain hopeful.