I turned my back on my good old truck tonight. Tomorrow they are going to drain her oil, pour some concoction into the engine, start her up, and let her run till she dies. Kind of sad. I felt like I turned her over to Dr. Kevorkian. My wife and I both had the same sad reaction when we heard what they were going to do. It was like taking your favorite pet to the vet for the last time.

My poor 12 year old 4x4 truck had been attacked inside and out by mice and chipmunks. She smelled real bad inside the cab -- from the mice that had multiple births over the last couple of years, 8 gallons of dumped chili on the front passenger seat and floor one frigid night when the truck decided it couldn't make it up an icy hill, and my granddaughter's milk bottle spill under the seat that I didn't find for a couple of hot summer weeks. She's been bashed hard on both sides by careless drivers in parking lots (both times, when I wasn't even in the truck), and she was rear-ended real hard by a drunk without a license or insurance while I was at a red light.

The "Cash for Clunkers" reward made it worthwhile to turn her into the authorities -- by several thousand dollars over what I could ever have hoped for. Plus, they took my neat little commuter car as a regular trade-in at top Kelly Blue Book trade-in value. I guess they felt sorry for me -- but the car was pristine, even though it had 120,000 miles on it and was loaded. I thought the salesman the the appraiser were going to duke it out over who got the car (the appraiser won). What a deal for me! They gave me a thousand more than I was expecting.

Even though I found this over the Internet, and it was at a dealer's about 75 miles away, it only took about one hour to turn over my two sets of keys for the new set of keys.

Between personal property tax, licenses, insurance, maintenance, and overall gas mileage, this was a no-brainer. I've now got a nice new Toyota Tacoma SR5 4x4 4-cylinder parked in the garage.

So, has anybody else cashed in their clunker?

My clunker is too old and gets too good of gas mileage.

It's a 92 Saturn and has just under 200,000 miles. I think it gets 41 mpg on the highway if I remember right. I only use it to make short trips and errands into town which is 2 miles away. The body which is mostly a composite material looks just as good as it did the day the wife bought it (it's a hand me down).

We have newer Saturn Vue that the wife mostly uses unless I need it to haul fish.

I have never owned a car newer then 1975. I only cash them in for other cars that are pre 75.

That's the way I like things.

My fiancee bought a new Subaru Forrester on Monday. No cash for clunkers dealing going on though. We needed more room over her old Toyota Corolla. I think my next truck will be a Tacoma also. I am praying my POS Chevy will hold together another year or two. This truck has to be the worst lemon I have ever had...

...Lonestar
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good post, MikeyB

better hurry; looks like the first bil' is already gone

The program ended at midnight.

1999 Ford Ranger 4x4 off road model, 168k miles, great truck, would definitly buy another, and recommend to anyone.

ok gotta brag in this case. My 2001 2500 silverado that has hauled way more weight than it is supposed to is still running. I probably just jinxed it. No biggie for 2001 you say. Bed has holes from years of fish runs with salt. However looks good and well it has 345,000 miles on it. It is used every single weekday with original engine and transmission. I've been blessed. catmando it will be sad when I sell it for junk parts. I hate it i will not buy another one since Chevy is now run by gov't idiots.

Mikey, that's great to hear from a young person.

Prior to owning our pond property both JWHAP and I only owned classic cars. They are more work to keep running that is for sure and many times they don't have all the buzzers and bells of a newer car but there's just something about opening the hood of a classic and seeing a carb and an old fashioned distributer that I find appealing. I've tuned more cars with a timing light and a dwell meter than I can remember. Dang I miss my classic cars.

But, they don't have AC.

Jeff, like you, I've been there and done that. Now, I recognize almost nothing under the hood of my cars and the pickup.

"I have never owned a car newer then 1975. I only cash them in for other cars that are pre 75. That's the way I like things."

"pre 75" - that's the same way I feel about music......

I've almost got my whole family on pre-75 cars. My mom is the only one left without.

Our lineup includes -

48 Plymouth Special Deluxe with a LT1 700R tranny, ford 9 inch, mustang II suspension.

70 Ford Maverick, 60some thousand original miles and the original dashpad is still soft.

75 Dodge Dart

76 Dodge Dart

66 Coronet Convertible.
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The cars that I once owned and now dont-

61 Chevy Apache Shortbed Stepside

73 Plymouth Duster


Currently I am on the lookout for a 3/4 ton truck, we got a boat I want to haul as well as the plan for horses in the 2-5 year future.

If you want to get something that will help with towing in the hills, but not kill you with bad gas mileage the rest of the time, look for a 3/4 T chevy/gmc that's powered by a 6.2l diesel. Slap a Banks turbo on it, and you'll have a truck that will get 20+ mpg (3:73 gear ratio or better) and still pull whatever you want. If you do go that route, I'd add two gauges. EGT gauge and a trans temp gauge.

It won't be 70's vintage, but it won't be electronically controlled either.

I'm gonna miss her. She was air conditioned and everything.



Cat, watch out for shopping carts. A while back I was sitting in a store parking lot in my new Tacoma waiting for a torrential rain to ease up. A plastic shopping cart suddenly appeared out of the rain and smacked into my door. It left 2 creases in the sheetmetal, both fairly visible. Glad it wasn't a metal shopping cart, or I may have had to call a wrecker.

That was your car with the custom air conditioning? I could have sworn I saw that in the local Wally World parking lot recently!

As for shopping carts and things -- my wife added a present to my new truck, and it wasn't very expensive. She got me the zero deductible unlimited scratch, dent, and rip option that Toyota offers with the 100,000 mile/60 month bumper-to-bumper warranty. If I get a paint chip, hail damage, shopping cart dent, a chip in the window -- or protection for (Oh, I hope I I've learned my lesson for at least the 49th time) of having a screwdriver or long nose pliers sticking out of my back pocket when getting in the vehicle. I think everything I've owned, or own, has been affected by my horrible back pocket habit -- the car I just traded, my tractor, my riding mower, my desk chair -- and the list goes back to my first Studebaker truck when I was only 16 years old!

Studebaker made a truck? I didn't know that. I just googled it and found some cool ones.

I had a 1956 Power Hawk. It had 3 on the floor with overdrive. It sounded like some kind of flying machine when I went into OD during what we later called "Contests of Speed".

Yeah, my first "car" was a 1955 Studebaker truck, with a little tiny V-8 (231 Cubic Inch, maybe?). It was beautiful in the dark, and it taught me alot -- like how to braze. It was so rusted out, I could see the highway below my feet when I was driving.

I replaced it with a much nicer looking '56 Studebaker truck. It had running boards and yellow ICC lights across the roof, just behind the windshield roof visor. It had a little flat head six. I think that is where the term "gutless wonder" came from.

When I first went in the Navy I was really broke. I guess my dad felt sorry for me, so he gave me his '63 Studebaker Lark. That was an aerodynamic marvel, but it got me around.

My dad had a good friend who was a car dealer and always had strange brands of cars. When I was growing up, we had two Kaisers and a Willys-Overland (1950s 4WD SUV). They don't make 'em like that anymore!

My first Velocipede was a 1950 4 door Packard with an Ultramatic Drive. It was a tank.