Getting a new car was my wife’s idea, not mine. Our old car is virtually brand new. The odometer measures a mere 180,000 miles. In our family that’s fresh off the lot. Our last Honda CR-V, or rather the one before that, now that we’ve just added a third CR-V to our illustrious menagerie of vehicles, boasted 320,000 miles. And even then it didn’t die of its own accord. My younger daughter’s boyfriend at the time totaled it on the Taconic State Parkway.
A novice driver, he overcompensated, causing the SUV to perform several flips on that part of the Taconic where it widens to three lanes, before coming to a stop upright on the side of the road. Miraculously, they hit no other cars and walked away with barely a scratch. Our gratitude and the vehicle’s performance in combat prompted us to replace it with another CR-V.
My wife’s thinking, which I suppose I reluctantly agree, is that we’re not getting any younger. One of us shouldn’t be left without a car when the other is on a trip somewhere. But my understanding, based on doom scrolling the news all day, is that this might be the worst time in human history to buy a car. Prices are high with tariffs threatening to drive them even higher. And interest rates are higher still.
On the other hand, perhaps now is as a good time as any to make a purchase, before cars become completely unaffordable. I momentarily flirted with the idea of buying something other than a CR-V. As dependable as Hondas are they’re not exactly sexy. They don’t shout the romance of the open road. Nobody is going to do a double-take at a stop light and ask themselves, “Who is that dangerously attractive fellow behind the wheel, playing Carole King at a sensible volume?”
We visited a Toyota showroom to look at the RAV4, not that a Toyota is quantitively glitzier than a Honda. It was slim pickings. We were told we could have any car we desired just so it was white or red and even then it would take weeks to deliver. Those shades and colors don’t represent our family’s palette, not that we tend towards the psychedelic. Both of our previous CR-V’s were gray.
My preference would be forest green. Wouldn’t you assume that a tasteful shade of green would be every thinking person’s first choice? Yet such vehicles are virtually impossible to find. That they don’t exist can lead me to only one sad and depressing conclusion: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
In the meantime, our current Honda, the one that hadn't given us a single concern, that lived to late middle-age without requesting anything more than a humble oil change, a new set of tires and maybe some brake pads suddenly conked out on the Taconic. My wife was behind the wheel. I wasn’t around to witness the incident. I could easily have become suspicious of her story since she wanted a new car but soon it started bucking while I was driving.
As it turned out mission failure couldn’t have come at a worse moment because we were planning to take a ten-day, thousand mile trip to Maine and Canada the following week. But it turned out not to be the car’s fault. To hear tell, it was mine in my eternal quest to find the lowest price gas around: We took the car to a Honda dealer that diagnosed the problem as bad gas. Twenty-five hundred bucks later the car was good to go.
While it was in the shop my spouse visited the Honda showroom. Conveniently, it was connected to the repair shop — you didn’t even have to go outdoors — and she called to report that she had found several attractive options. I frankly didn’t see why we needed a new car now that our old car was new again — it made it to Canada and back without a hiccup — but I was also forced to acknowledge that the writing appeared on the wall. Each of us has a lifespan — that goes for cars, too — and while we might deceive ourselves that we can keep going forever the actuarial tables suggest otherwise.
On my own visit to Honda the next day to retrieve the car from the repair shop I also looked at new vehicles and found one that seemed right. There’s a grain to life as there is to a sirloin steak. Some of us are more fortunate than others to be able to recognize it and cut along the grain. Thus, the bottom-of-the-line 2026 CR-V seemed to fit the bill. Despite its modest price it came with a sufficient number of bells and whistles, as well as in a new becoming shade of gray, more like clay.
So now we’re a two-car family. I haven’t quite gotten used to the sense of happy-go-lucky freedom. I’m still thinking that I have to plan my life, or at least my errands, around my wife’s schedule. And now that the new car will become our default ride our old vehicle, soon to be clocking far fewer miles than it once did, will probably be around forever or until some act of God or boyfriend totals it.
Ralph Gardner Junior is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found in the Berkshire Eagle and on Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
