Driving A Beater Through The Car Wash

I have written a time or three about my aging Honda. I bought it brand new, but it is now on the downhill slope to its seventeenth birthday. It now occurs to me that cars, like the fictional characters Benjamin Button or Dorian Gray, age backwards from the rest of us. We humans start life with awkwardness and wrinkles, not looking like our true, fabulous selves until we are in our late teens. Cars are the opposite – beautiful to start and not so fabulous as a teenager. And then there is the matter of hygiene.

Where I come from, cars like what I now drive were called “beaters”. A beater is a car that is purely utilitarian. You fix what prevents you from driving it, but you don’t fix anything else. And you certainly never expend any effort on a beater’s appearance. Because that is just a waste of time. It looks terrible when you start and it looks terrible after you try to make it better, so why bother? A beater works best when you have a “good car” for those occasions when you wish to avoid looking like a member of John Steinbeck’s famous Joad family from “The Grapes Of Wrath”. Or like one of the “Beverly Hillbillies” if you prefer television to reading. We have one of those, so all is good. A good car, I mean. We certainly do not have one of the Joads or the Clampets living with us.

I have made peace with driving a beater. I was going to replace it, but then we had a pandemic. I could have saved a bunch, but then I didn’t really want to go out and buy a car. Then we got a chip shortage just as everyone else wanted to buy a new car, making new cars almost impossible to find (and ridiculously expensive). And now – my old beater is still here. Every day it starts, runs, turns, stops and blows both hot and cold air. In other words, it does what it needs to do. Especially since I no longer have to worry about what clients think when they see me driving it. I just keep coming up with more reasons to be delighted with my decision to exit from the world of lawyering.

My poor little car’s appearance, however, is something else altogether. Inside, it is just a good cleaning away from looking as good as it ever did. But its exterior is a problem. First, the Honda Rust Spots ™ behind the rear wheels are blooming fabulously. This photo is several years old, and it looks far worse now. Give the thing another year and it will be blooming in other places too, like from under the rear doors.

Like this. Also, it is a white car, which makes the Honda Rust Spots really wave their flag for all to see. I tried some rust-remediation and spot painting early in the process, but that turned out to be (as it always was) a temporary fix. The rust is back, bigger and better than ever.

Worse, Honda used an old style of paint on the car, one that did not use a clear finish coat on top of the color layer. This means that my white car does what all white cars used to do – the finish oxidizes and gets dull. I tried to stay ahead of that problem with periodic (and energetic) polishing, but no longer see the point with rust (like June in the old song) “busting out all over”.

For some inexplicable reason, however, I decided to drive it through the car wash a few days ago. Maybe it was that I remembered the little book of pre-paid car wash coupons in my wallet. Maybe it was how badly discolored my front wheels were from brake dust. Maybe it was that I had recently polished the cataracts from my yellowed headlight covers and that the newly clear headlights begged me to do something with the rest of the car. I don’t know how old those coupons are – but I don’t think this car had been through a wash in maybe three years.

I paid $6 to upgrade my regular wash to one that included the wheel cleaner. The fresh faced young attendant helpfully told me of the sale they were running on their program of unlimited washes for a fixed monthly price. I could only respond by asking him to take a good look at my car and decide if I was a likely prospect. We both got a good laugh out of that one.

The car wash did not pull the loose edge of the front bumper off the way it once pulled a rear view mirror from a car I had back in the 1970’s. It also did not spray water past the weatherstrips. In times past, I have owned cars that required me to take a towel with me to wipe up the multiple drips that came in around the windows. Nope, this old beater went through the carwash just like it was supposed to. It probably realized that if there were any shenanigans, this wash would be its last, so the car was on its best behavior.

So now the wheels are (mostly) cleaner and the brown leaf stains are (mostly) gone from the hood. The bugs are (mostly) gone from the front bumper and the white paint kinda sorta gives an approximation of a shine (if you look at it just right). And I no longer have to wipe my hands off after opening the filthy rear hatch.

Life with a beater can really be a pretty rewarding proposition, if you come at it with the appropriate mindset. A small Honda with about 160k miles on it has a lot of life left – in a mechanical sense. But living in the midwestern U.S. as I do, rust never sleeps, so all cars here come with an expiration date. One day my mechanic will look at me with sad eyes, explaining that my car is no longer safe to go up onto the lift because corrosion has attacked the understructure. Which also means that it will no longer be safe to drive. But until that day comes, I will bask in the goodness of my cheerful little pennies-per-mile beater.

Who knows, maybe I will keep it long enough to eventually drive it through the car wash again.

33 thoughts on “Driving A Beater Through The Car Wash”

  1. I am as one with your commitment to long term car ownership! Always bought the bottom of the line Toyota, maintained it according to “the book”, and drove it until any possible major service, in the 200,000 mile range, seemed to be approaching what I would consider a decent down payment on a new one. Looks? Bah! Who cares! I have to say, tho, that my last Toyota (and my ‘93) went to 200,000 miles with much less rust than my ‘87 or ‘77. Buying a well made Japanese car, and maintaining it and holding on to it forever, has resulted in me spending far, far, less money on transportation than many of my friends, and allowed me to go years without a car payment!

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    • There was a time when I thought I might get into a “new every 5” cycle for our two cars, so that the older one would age out at 10 years, but everything was going so well that we skipped 2017 and 2022. Our “good car” is a 2012, but in fabulous condition with less than 100k. At this rate, the next new one may last me the rest of my life!

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      • Ditto…I bought a Kia Soul in 2020, and aside from it being a theft target for inner city thugs lately, I though it might be the car for the rest of my life, or until I maybe shouldn’t be driving. It has drive train coverage for 100,000 miles, and a paid a modest amount to extend the bumper to bumper coverage from 60,000 miles to 100,000 miles as well. It’s now three years old, and I only have 12,000 miles on it! Since the warranty is 100,000 years or ten years, I won’t be even near 100,000 miles when I hit ten years, but I have to figure they’re pretty confident that the car will be trouble free for the 100,000 miles or they wouldn’t offer the warranty!

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    • There will be some hard decision points – like if the a/c goes out. Until that time, I am tempted to keep driving it as long as it is willing to keep being driven.

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  3. Long ago, at some other website you know about, I threw out some nonsense about cars being built to mimic a 35 year-old – mature yet with no leaks, squeaks, or dribbles. However, it may not be nonsense. That theory would make your Fit approximate a 53 year-old person…which, with people, is the point where some have mostly escaped the aging process yet others are displaying a few dermatological issues.

    Until such time as your Honda has terminal cancer, or some other major ailment, I’d recommend to keep driving it. I suspect you aren’t driving it long distances, which helps considerably with the dilemma about what to do. It breaking down 500 miles away from home is much worse than it doing so 5 miles away.

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    • I am now driving a 25 mile daily commute (on a gig I will soon be writing about) and we are also kind of using it as our first-up errand runner because it is economical. The result is that our minivan gets filled up with gas maybe every other month and could well last nearly forever. Someone once referred to a car like this as a sacrificial anode for the other car. There is something to that description.

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  4. It’s not too late, you could get a welded metal repair on the trademarked Honda rust. Then visit Niagara Falls, take in the superior view from our side, get the Fit Krown rustproofed and head home with a case of Krown goo spray cans.

    My sister just bought a new CRV for $45k, you can’t blame Honda for discontinuing the Fit when you can sell all the CRVs you can make at that price!

    It also could be far worse, a friend’s daughter is looking for a cheap car and they had me out to look over a 2007 Mazda3. Low miles, nice paint, AC worked, aluminum wheels and a terminal case of Mazda3 Rocker Rust™

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    • My brother had a lot of Mazdas and eventually gave up due to the other Mazda fault: front McPherson strut tear-through! Common over many models and years!

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    • I had thought for maybe five seconds about doing some metal repairs. And even two seconds about signing up for a shop class where I could learn to do the welding myself. But the rust is starting to show up in other places, like the lower door seams. A careful look at that last photo shows a teeny little area at the lower rear door that is going to be a contrasting dark brown in the next year.

      The prices of new cars are mind-boggling. My first house cost me $60k, and now it is no trick to pay that for a nice new car. I am starting to sound like my parents or grandparents when I say things like this. And yes, you make me happy that I avoided the Mazda3 when I bought this Honda. I had really wanted one of them, but it was skimpy on headroom for my tall sons. Rust disaster averted!

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    • Doug D and JP, the U.S. has abandoned small cars for 40k+ cars not because they can’t be sold, but because the dealers don’t want to waste the same amount of time with their dealer sales hi-jinx selling a 15k car as a 40k one, and making a smaller amount of profit. What they want to do as well, is unload their short life used car trade ins with 100,000 miles on them for 10 grand! Ford stopped making small cars in the US, but still makes plenty in Europe and the British Isles! (Why are those people always smarter than Americans?) I read a few years ago that they dumped another 250 million Pounds into improving a small car plant in Europe. A few years ago I went to a London Ford dealers website and looked at a very nice small car about the same as a Honda Fit, and when I did the conversion of Pounds to USD, the MSRP was something like $12,800! My parking lot in a poor neighborhood is chock full of late issue Ford Fiestas. So they can’t sell?

      Why does everyone is the US have to constantly change everything about how they work and do business, except the car dealers and big-med? You could import those small Fords to the US, sell them at fixed prices, and put a few smart high school grads at some desks signing paper work and OKing loans. Anyone who’s ever taken business in college and had an interest in the economics of it, will tell you that supply and demand is a joke, because there’s a lot of demand for inexpensive well made vehicles under 18 grand, and the ability to supply them, and they must won’t do it! They’re “gaming” the demand by not offering choices and easy ways to purchase new, and trying to unload their animal used crap mobiles!

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      • Every state in the US has a “franchise law” that probably goes back to the 1920s. Those were passed to protect dealers who had invested into a franchise from being cut out of the loop by the manufacturer who decided to sell direct. I wonder if there will ever be enough political support for some states to repeal them, especially when most car dealer franchises are owned by big nationwide companies and not by local business people anymore.

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  5. For a “beater”, your car looks and runs pretty good. I guess the concept of what a beater is has evolved. When I imagine a beater car, I think more of something like what the Blues Brothers or Uncle Buck drove. Then there’s the concept of the “mill car” (as described by Jean Shepherd) i.e., the crappy 2nd hand car you drove to your job at the northern Indiana steel mill, and the fallout from the smokestacks would eat into the finish while you were parked in the mill lot. Then it would rain and all the car body’s upper surfaces would have a uniform coat of patina surface rust!

    As to not trying to improve the appearance of a beater . . . I don’t know–I’ve acquired several beater-looking cars and I’ve worked my magic on them, and they ended up looking pretty good. It’s all about love!

    Here’s my dad’s 1981 Honda Civic beater, later passed down to my brother. It had the trademark Honda rust all over it. My brother painted a bat symbol on the back–because that’s what you do with a beater!

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    • I can see your point that my car is at the squeaky upper-limit for what constitutes a beater. I guess it is a beater by my standards, because I have never put up with visible rust on a car before. Also, I would not hesitate to drive it on a trip lasting an hour or two (one way). Not everyone’s idea of a beater car could do that. I also have to say that Hondas are far better at resisting rust than they were in the 80s and before, so I should count my blessings there.

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  6. Functionality is all I care about in a vehicle because it only depreciates anyways. But I admire your commitment because I always give in and trade in around 90-110 thousand miles. My oldest son is more like you.

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    • For much of my life, those of my parents’ generation (and older) were adamant that once a car hit 60k miles it was on the verge of disaster, and at 80k miles, it was ready for the junkyard. Then those limits moved to 80-100k miles. I spent many years buying well-kept cars from elderly owners that had reached 10-12 years old and under or around 100k miles. They were cheap to buy and great to drive. Sadly, cars like that are getting harder to come by. I have had to make my own. 🙂

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  7. Congratulations on your seventeenth year with your Honda! Rust aside, it sounds like your car still has a lot of life left in it.

    Up until two years ago, I owned a 2010 Ford Focus that ended up getting totaled when I was rear ended on the highway around Columbus, Ohio (FWIW I was not the at fault driver). Reflecting on the car in hindsight, even before it was totaled, I think that for about the last year that I had it, it had probably crossed the threshold of taking more from me than it was giving in return. It got to the point that I always expected that when I took it in for an oil change I would end up spending at least a few hundred dollars to get something else fixed too. That is, except for the air conditioner, which I decided not to fix (I had roll down windows after all :/ ). This was a terrible choice in combination with its leather seats (never again) during the summer. Still, I mustered on with it out of inertia and a desire not to deal with car salesman. Not that I was happy about it being totaled, but fate arguably made the decision that needed to be made.

    I ended up replacing it with a brand new 2022 Honda Civic. Though no one in their right mind would refer to a Civic as any kind of luxury car, it is, by comparison, worlds better than the Focus, and I am trying to do my best to keep its appearance nice. It is consistently much cleaner than the Focus ever was. And no disrespect to the Ford Motor Company, but I do believe I’ll get more from the Civic than the Focus. I am not sure if it’ll get to seventeen years, but I do hope I can keep it well into its second decade.

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    • I have a deep connection to American car brands, so it pains me to say that your experience with the Focus seems not all that unusual. It is possible that something brand new today from Ford, GM or Stellantis will age more gracefully than something new from Honda, Toyota or even Hyundai/Kia. But I doubt it. My experience with Hondas is that if you take moderately good care of it, it will last you a good long time.

      I had not been aware that your Focus had been totaled – I am glad you are OK.

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  8. I think the expression “cleans up well” works here JP. I think your aging Honda looks great after its car wash. I laughed at the line “It probably realized that if there were any shenanigans, this wash would be its last, so the car was on its best behavior.” When I had my 1973 Super Beetle (automatic with no clutch), I took my little gem to a small automatic car wash and there was a little consternation because the young guys operating the car wash said I was not properly “on the rails” and would have to back out. However, the mechanisms for moving forward through the car wash were already in place … the car was rolling, but slipped off on one side and got stuck halfway through. Not good. I was told not to do anything and they would figure it out and called the owner. The three of them stewed over what to do and finally grabbed a few more guys and lifted/pushed the car out of the car wash – not a good experience and I never went there again. Luckily, no damage to the car, but my nerves … shot!

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    • Haha, thanks! You have the benefit of having relocated to a place where body rust is not much of a problem. If my car had lived such a place its whole life, I would probably still consider it worthy of the time and effort to keep it nice.

      You remind me that the last car I would have considered a beater was an old Crown Victoria I got from my mother. It became a beater after three teens got done driving it. The funny thing was that it had many more things wrong with it than this car does, and the clear coat was starting to delaminate from the paint. However, it still had no rust on it (even as a life-long northern/central Indiana car) when I finally got rid of it maybe 10 years ago.

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  10. Just today Margaret went to the supermarket – and she told me “I’ll take the beater van.” I knew just what she was talking about – the store is in a sort-of rough area and has a chaotic parking lot, so no reason to risk our “good car.”

    The Beater Van is our 13-year old Odyssey, which now has about 160,000 mi. on it. I use it now for daily commuting, and for trips like Margaret’s supermarket excursion. Like your Fit, it’s has a few issues that will likely never get addressed, and I don’t wash it nearly as much as I used to, but given the price of new cars, I see no reason to get rid of it any time soon. And I’m happy with that – there’s a certain satisfaction in driving a quasi-beater (not quite a real beater, and plus, it has no rust).

    Our “good car” – the 2018 Sedona that replaced the Odyssey in Good Car Status when we bought it new – has 70,000 miles now, and we’ve been asking ourselves just when do we stop thinking of it as the Good Car?

    As for car washes, it occurred to me that I haven’t taken one of our cars through a wash in several years. I’ve always enjoyed washing cars myself, but usually supplemented with a trip to the wash when I didn’t have time. But I think that’s one of those luxuries that we’ve just unconsciously cut back on in recent years. I just look forward to heavy rains to wash off the Beater Van.

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    • I am farther down the road from you, with my “good van” being a 2012 with about 95k on it. If something happens to the Fit, the van will kind of become my “beater van”, but it will be the nicest “beater van” in the world.

      The unaddressed issues on the Fit are a driver’s door power lock that doesn’t work, but the workaround is to lock/unlock with the key, and that works the rest of the doors/hatch locks. The bigger thing is that the air bag system is not working due to a rodent having chewed some wires. Honda wanted several hundred dollars to fix it (and my indy mechanic won’t touch it). At the time I thought I might be getting rid of the car so I held off. I still think about fixing that one, but then again, I always wear my seat belts and if I get run over by something really big I will be screwed anyway.

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      • We have the airbag issue in our ’95 Thunderbird now too. I just remind myself that seatbelts are better protection than airbags anyway, and that helps me ignore the airbag warning light.

        I drive that car to work about once a week – it too has an increasing list of maladies that’ll never be fixed. But it’s nice having a third car, so we’ve agreed to keep that car until the next “major” thing comes up. Of course we’ve said that before and always end up paying for the next major thing anyway.

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      • For years I demanded a car with roll windows and manual locks, usually not a problem because I also demanded a car with manual transmission, which was usually what you got. I always looked at them as the weak link of any car. For some reason, it seems like not even the Japanese can make a dependable long life power lock or power window. My last Toyota, by the 180,000+ mark, had three quarters of the locks not working unless you used the key, the windows faired a little better. Also by my last Toyota, most of their models had zero option to get anything but power windows and locks. Managed to get a manual transmission Kia Soul this time around, but still with power locks and windows.

        BTW, in my neck of the woods, in order to license your car, you need an emissions test every two years, AND, the safety equipment has to work…so…a code showing a non working airbag means no license. Think that’s bad, my brother lived on the east coast and they checked your tread depth on the tires and took the wheels off and looked at the brakes! You could have perfectly functioning brakes with a years worth of depth left, and the technician could say…”maybe not”…and reject you.

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      • I used your rationale in my last car purchase. I insisted that my 2012 minivan NOT be equipped with power side doors. The forums were full of gripes about failing power doors on all kinds of minivans. If neither Chrysler (minivan king at the time) nor Honda (the overall quality king) could manage power doors that lasted a long time, then I had little faith that Kia could.

        The joke turned out to be on me. The only significant issues I have had outside of warranty (besides one power lock) was BOTH rear side door handles breaking. Fixing a bad power door component would have been easier.

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  11. I appreciate the definition of “beater”, J P; didn’t know it before this post. My own is the white MDX directly in front of yours in the parking lot photo – the 2016 edition. Hail divots, a scratched up side mirror (when my wife drove too close to a gate keypad), torn leather in the rear seat from the dog’s toenails, and best of all, a failed front view camera that makes most of the safety features obsolete and lights up the dashboard like a Christmas tree with warning lights. Acura says replacement cameras simply aren’t available right now, but I don’t want to pay the $1,500 anyway. My last MDX carried me safely from 2002-2016 so I have no intention of moving on from this one anytime soon. Gotta make it to at least 300,000 again.

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    • You are my kind of car owner! You clearly drive more than we do, so “life” piles up on your car sooner than it did ours. But at least you should avoid the rust.

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  12. It was just about 2 years ago the Cartier went to Rochester, New York with its new owner. 184,000 miles on it at the time.. I do miss it a bit but I still have Big Rhonda, the 2004 Ultimate, and she just clicked over 63K miles.

    Dumb luck caused me to obtain a CPO Lincoln MKZ from Strieter Lincoln for a song. Sadly the dealership sold back in January and the new owners have quite systematically destroyed it.

    The cars will be going to Dahl Ford from now on.

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      • If the new owners (out of towners, naturally) had deliberately sought to destroy all customer goodwill, they couldn’t have done much worse. They terminated about 90% of the staff–even in service! Even the receptionist. When I took the car in in July, I only recognized two people.

        Then they dropped me off at the office but neglected to pick me up. Fortunately, Brett overheard my side of the resulting phone conversation and offered to run me over there.

        The rub is when I talked to KV Dahl about all this, he said he had been trying to buy Strieter for years. No one even approached him. Oh well!

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