Goodbye, my black, shiny friend. I barely got to know you.
I remember it was March of 2010. I had a new job, in a new place, and my baby boy was just born. Life was full of changes, and my old Corolla was six years old and lived through many salty winters. I felt like doing something for myself, and, you know, Toyota was having some PR problems at the time.
So Gus, the sales rep at Toyota of Bellevue, drove me out to their satellite lot to meet you. We drove down I-90, and he showed me your power mode. I was hooked. Hybrids were neat-o. I drove you to our little apartment after signing some papers.
My commute to the Microsoft campus was pretty short at the time, only about 11 miles, with very little elevation change and few traffic lights. In those days, I'd coax you into 55, even 57 mpg. I filled your tank once a month at most.
It wasn't long before we did our first driving trip, down the Oregon coast. You validated what my friend Mike said about your cargo space, with plenty of room for all of the crap that you have to carry (or choose to carry) when you have a baby. Who knew you had so much room? Do you remember when we stuffed that big 55" TV in your trunk, with Simon in his car seat in the back? Those were good times.
When it really counted, you got me and my cats safely from Seattle to Cleveland, going 2,400 miles in four days. Once again, I was thankful for all of the room you had, and I apologize for all of the fur. You also did a nice job going 70+ mph for hours in the 90-degree heat of South Dakota. Weird weather.
I was also pleased with your snow performance. We had those weird "events" in Seattle where people were sliding around and abandoning their cars in two inches of snow, but I found that you handled really well. I guess we'll never have a true winter together here.
We chose you to get us safely to North Carolina for Christmas, since your spacious trunk offered plenty of room for the gifts we would inevitably have to bring home from very exited grandparents. Not only that, but even on highways, over long distance and in mountains, you managed to pull off 46 mpg.
For some reason, we trusted our GPS to take us off of the freeway, to cut a diagonal line off of the point where two freeways met. In Bristol, Tennessee, some jackass of a woman with the demeanor of the Crazy Cat Lady on The Simpsons, slammed into us from behind while we were stopped at a traffic light, at full speed. Your bumper and trunk absorbed much of the energy, but the push into the intersection pushed us into a turning car that sheered off the front of you.
There you sat, your front bumper gone and your radiator hanging on by a thread. Your blue and silver Toyota logo was scattered somewhere in the intersection. But inside, along with my wife and little toddler, I was physically OK. You hung in there long enough to be driven to the side of the road, where I pressed your power button, one last time.
I've always taken some amount of pride in the fact that I've never been in an accident. I've narrowly avoided cars spinning out in the snow on the freeway, and kept cars out of ditches along icy roads. The one thing I never considered was that some moron could hit me while sitting at a traffic light. Sadly, that's how you met your end.
But you were a good car, and you performed particularly well when we needed you most. I'm thankful that your Japanese makers kept us safe at your expense. You can be sure that I'll talk favorably of your memory when I bring home your younger sibling.
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