All Systems Fail

Still looks OK, but appearances are deceiving.

Last September, like they do with people, multiple systems failed on the 1990 Toyota Camry Wagon. The rack-and-pinion steering made a clunking sound, the battery drained whether or not the car was running (I had to disconnect the battery every night and plug in the recharger), and horsepower was off noticeably.

The car's value was only a few hundred dollars, and it would cost $thousands to fix. It was time to take it to the scrapyard.

The Peninsula's buyback location.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has a Vehicle BuyBack Program to get polluting cars off the road. The requirements were that the car be operating, be at least 22 years old, and pass a visual inspection (for example, minimum of one headlight, one taillight and one brake light). Provided I could drive it to the Buyback scrapyard, the BAAQMD would pay me $1,000.

I did, and they did.

Now that I'm retired, this was a good time to find out whether and how long our two-car family can downsize to one vehicle. (We went nearly a year but finally had to obtain a second car this month.)