Goodbye Lil’ Red

After several showings, I just sold my sweet 1989 Red Honda Prelude Si. 5 Speed, sunroof, fast, fun, economical—this was my favorite car…Well, only car…ever!

I had listed it on Craigslist about a month ago and had all kinds of interest, but no actual cash.

I bought this car in 1992 when I was a sophomore in college. It was my first and has been the ONLY car I’ve ever owned.

My mom and step dad found it a newspaper ad. It was at a BMW dealer where a NJ lawyer had traded it in for a more ‘lawyerly’ BMW.

It was perfect for me…and has been ever since! I drove it around South Carolina (where I went to school) for several years and it helped me out on several road trips back north to New Jersey. Then, in 1998, it carried me to my new home of Chicago. I drove it a lot less here. Let’s just say when I moved here 9 years ago it had 91,000 miles on it. Now it has 104,000. That’s about 2000 miles a year. Not much, huh?

It suffered a bit here thanks to the harsh winters and street parking it had to endure in Chicago. Little Prelude even got hit once while parked–classic hit and run.A nice neighbor actually saw the whole thing, but I could never get the people to admit it.

She’s got a few minor dings and scratches now, mostly due to parallel parkers riding up on the hood. Someone even stole my “H” emblem off my hood once. I pictured some guy wearing it around his neck–nice bling!

One year I even contacted the original owner–the lawyer from NJ. I know I’m a bit odd, but it was fun writing to him ten years later to tell him his old car was doing just fine. He actually wrote me back and said he thought he had made a mistake trading it in and missed the peppy prelude!

Of course, you know I have all the maintenance records in alphabetical order in the glove box. And I’ve been told the interior looks brand new. I’m not one to junk up the inside of my car. Unlike some, I never used it as a storage locker.

So, at least five people had already told me, “I’ll take it.” But for some reason or another, they never did. Some just didn’t show up. One totally wanted it and accepted it at my price, then turned around a day later and said he wanted it for $500 less…after already agreeing to buy it! One said her son didn’t want red after all. One said it was overpriced. One wanted his mechanic son-in-law to check it out, but it wouldn’t be for another week.

Finally ‘a nice Jewish boy’ came along and gave me a $200 cash deposit. I wanted to secure a sale, but wanted to keep my car until the day before I left the country. After he test drove it and literally kicked the tires he said he would take it. I honestly got teary eyed! I did not expect that. I mean it’s a car for god sakes! But it’s been with me for fourteen years and just kind of confirms all the changes I’m making. So we signed a ‘letter of intent’ two weeks ago and I just watched him drive away in it. For the first time, I was nervous about driving it. I could just imagine something happening to it in the last 2 weeks I owned it even though I never got in an accident in 14 years. I couldn’t have sold it to a better guy—he even called me the following night to jokingly give me my “daily Prelude update!”

It was an awesome car, fun to drive and served me better than I could have imagined.