My wife’s car is over twenty-one years old. Just 110,000 miles on it, it’s her car for buzzing around town. It’s a gray Ford Focus ZX5. I surprised her with it after her previous car was declared totaled when it was rear-ended.
The five in ZX5 means the car has five doors, which includes its hatchback. We bought it new. It’s never broken down on us. The engine is terrific, the brakes are always screeching and complaining, the suspension has sports car aspirations, and the seats were shit. I put seat covers on it ten years ago, which greatly improved the interior’s looks.
Worse for me, though, is her car’s transmission. An automatic, it does this clunky downshift which sounds and feels like the engine is falling out. I took it to Ford after the first few times that it happened; they said, “That’s normal.” I replied, “That’s shit.” I wanted to get rid of the car. Get something newer, maybe a hybrid, which would get better fuel economy and have more modern creature comforts.
Wife says, “Nope. I want to keep my car.” That’s that.
She came to me the other day. “My car is making a new noise.”
“Well, it’s old. It’s not a surprise.”
“It groans a lot. Sometimes it sounds like it’s saying, ‘my knees hurt.'”
My wife is a year younger than me, which puts her in her late sixties. I looked at her. “I think you might be projecting, hon.”
She agreed.
Michael Seidel, writer 