Many years ago, my Great Uncle Walt used to tell a story. I think it was about a brother of his whom I never met. Let’s call him “John.” It went something like this:
John ordered and paid for a car with the exact feature set he wanted. After a few weeks the dealer received the car and offered to deliver it. John said they could deliver it that afternoon and he would be home to receive it.
Sometime later John got another call. It was the dealer telling him, “We are so sorry. While driving your car to your place the driver had an accident and totaled your car.”
John’s response was, “No. That is not what happened. Your driver totaled your car.”
Last Friday Barb and I drove to see a movie in my car. As we pulled away from a traffic light the car barely moved even with the engine at a fairly high RPM. It was almost as if the car was not really in gear. After a few seconds, the car behaved normally long enough to get us to the movie. On the way, Barb made an online service appointment for the next day with the dealership. We dropped the car off later that night.
On Saturday, I received word that the torque converter, transmission, rear differential, and battery needed to be replaced. I knew the differential was occasionally making an odd sound and maybe a sort of thumping vibration during some turns. I had been wondering about the battery too. The car computer would notify me via the phone app that it was shutting off communications to save battery after just a day or two of not driving the car. The total would be about $23,000. The Blue Book price of the car is about $15,000.
I found a newer car I liked at Jess Ford in Pullman, Washington for considerably less than I could in the Seattle area. They had two other cars that, while not my top choices, would be good enough to do everything I needed to do for Boomershoot 2026.
On Tuesday of this week, I took a flight to Pullman to look at the car and probably buy it. The salesman met me at the airport, showed me the car, and after looking at the numbers I agreed to buy it. He programmed the door unlock feature with the same code I used for my last two cars, and he set up the app on my phone to communicate with the car. He then directed me to the finance manager to sign all the paperwork and write the check for the total price of the car. As I was doing that, someone else would take the car to the gas station and fill the tank.
I filled out all the paperwork and had filled out most of the check when the salesman came to the office and asked the finance manager if he would come out to talk. From the tone of his voice, I knew something was wrong. I stopped writing. What could it be? Did they suspect I was a con artist or something? Did they think my check would bounce?
A minute or so later they came back into the office. They told me the kid who was to fill up the tank had wrecked the car. They didn’t know how bad, but if I didn’t want the car anymore that would be understandable. “We’ll make everything right on this.” Further discussion ensued and I told them that if it was just a dented fender or something they could pay for the repair and I would be fine with that. They appreciated that and said someone was going out to find out how bad the damage was.
After about 15 minutes they came back and solemnly told me that I did not want that car. It was probably totaled. Remembering my Uncle Walt’s story, I told them that I was glad it was their car and not mine.
I asked about the two backup cars I had seen online. Both of them were out as loaner cars. There was nothing else on the lot that I was interested in.
As it was late in the day, they offered me a loaner car, offered to pay for a motel, and offered a free dinner if I would come back the next day when they had one or both of the backup cars on the lot again. I accepted the car, drove to my underground bunker, spent the night, and came back the next morning. I purchased one of the backup cars and drove it home Wednesday afternoon in time for dinner with Barb.
On Thursday the salesman sent me a picture of the car:
“Did he roll it?” I asked.
His response: “He rolled it twice.” *
The driver was taken to the hospital, examined, and released. Other than being badly shaken, he is okay. The salesman told me he has been a great employee and will retain his job.
* Chat GPT, Copilot, and Grok are skeptical of the two rolls. They claim there is no evidence of that in the picture. Claude suggested a complete roll and landing primarily on the driver side rear wheel. Multiple rolls are judged unlikely by Claude. Chat GPT claims a tripping like event caused the wheel/tire damage and the roll.
Why not a truck?
1) Money.
2) Size.
I put about 20K miles on the vehicle each year. In addition to the gasoline costs, I would spend a lot more up front on a truck. My cost out the door was $29,118.15 for a 2025, Platinum trim, Ford Escape with ~20,000 miles.
Unless it was a small truck, it would not fit in Barb’s garage or the garage of my underground bunker.
What is a “tripping event”? To me it looks like there was a blowout of the tire on the left rear, and blowouts on the rear wheels are harder to control than blowouts on the front wheels. If he was on a curve and going at some supra-legal speed, that corner of the car would no longer keep up with the rest of the car, and a roll could occur. It is a testament to the manufacturer’s safety engineering that their driver was only shaken and not badly injured.
A lateral slide into a curb or ditch.
Did you ever get a report of just HTF the guy managed to roll the car?
Probably not; since it’s not his car, it really wouldn’t matter to him.
In the words of a lawyer, he would no longer have any interest in that car.
No. I will probably try to find the police report some day.
Cars are a construct of the white male patriarchy.
This threw me a little:
“The car computer would notify me via the phone app that it was shutting off communications to save battery”
Your car can talk to you through your phone? Who else does it talk to? Who can talk to it?
Means it was a fairly new car…Battery is no big deal (expensive to change these days because you have to do some voodoo to the computer) that’s essentially a consumable. I currently own 5 vehicles (car, truck, three motorcycles) and it seems like I’m changing a battery on something every year.
The torque converter and differential though? Not common failure points. In all my years and as many times as I’ve pushed vehicles over the 200k mile mark, I’ve never had a torque converter fail and a differential only once.
Just a further data point in my position that I’ll never buy a newer car than the 2011 I own now. They’re junk. And they phone home without my permission. Not gonna have it.
It has its own cellular connection (via AT&T). It gives health reports to the manufacturer and the owner. Miles to the next oil change, tire air pressure, windshield washer fluid levels, miles to the next maintenance interval.
You can also do remote starts and get its exact location via your phone.
It will update the computer software via the same Internet connection. You can give permission to other people to connect to the car.
Supposedly, you can disable giving information to the manufacturer. But it would be difficult to verify that.
My older car is a 2020 Escape.
I pulled a trailer for a few thousand of its 108,925 miles. Some of those miles were probably over its rated towing capacity on steep hills and other situations in muddy fields. In hindsight, I probably brought the drive train failures on myself.
Vehicle batteries have a life expectancy of about five years. Five vehicles? On average, about one battery replacement per year.
All the more reason why you should have a truck.
Towing with a vehicle not really designed for it or beyond its capacity:
Circa 1988 I got a good deal ($2k) on a 1970 Ford Mustang fastback. Bone stock with a 302 2v (210 horsepower from the factory), C4 automatic transmission and open differential.
In 1990 I was transferred from Memphis, TN to Norfolk, VA and needed to get a trailer with some stuff that the Navy wouldn’t ship, and my motorcycle from one place to the other.
I bought a trailer that had been made by cutting the bed off a short bed pickup at the frame and welding a tongue onto it. I didn’t want to permanently mount a trailer hitch to my classic car so I bought a piece of 6″ angle iron that I drilled holes in so I could bolt it to the bumper mounts and put a ball hitch on it. I towed the trailer with the motorcycle and a bunch of other stuff on it about 600 miles or so including through the mountains.
I never weighed it, but I’d guess altogether it was probably over a ton.
I drove that car as my daily driver for over 20 years. I sold it around 2016 when it became obvious it needed some TLC that I simply didn’t have the time or facilities to provide.
The odometer only read to 99,999.9, and it “only” had about 30k when I bought it but it had obviously had some use in its previous 18 years, so I assumed it was at 130k when I bought it. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. I rolled it once personally, so I’m pretty certain it had about 280k miles when I sold it. I made relatively minor repairs many times, but it was still the original powertrain.
Not to say that proves anything…longevity like that for a US made car of that era was rare. There’s a reason the odometers didn’t go into the 100,000’s back then. Not really trying to make a point with that story, just reminiscing a bit.
I want a vehicle with exactly none of those remote features. I want it to do what I tell it to do, while I’m in it, and nothing else.
Sadly, those sorts of cars are no longer made in this country.
I want the vehicles you describe readily available. But for everyday use, I utilize a lot of the connected features and would miss them.
You and I both want a 1990-2000 Toyota diesel Hilux
I’m impressed by the structural strength of the passenger compartment. Roof crumpled a little and windshield smashed, yet the door glass is intact and likely the doors open.
My best guess is a slide into a curb on the driver’s side. Both mag wheels are broken (aluminum wheels are not very strong, since the days that the car builders got serious about weight reduction), the rear bumper seems to be missing. Really need a photo of the other side. A double roll would indicate a fair bit of speed that needed to be bled off before stopping. In 5 years of patrolling freeways near San Jose, I only recall 2 that made more than a full rotation. The 1+ partial roll was trashed, the 2+ was driven away after I pulled it onto the tires. Those were rolled on soft ground. Most that stayed on pavement didn’t make a full roll. Not enough drag to keep a roll continuing beyond one side or the roof. Too slippery. (Especially in the rain)
The side windows are VERY strong now. Difficult to intentionally break. They seem to be made similar to a windshield, and exiting a vehicle that ends up in water may be a big problem. Exiting a crash when the doors are jammed may be more exciting than you would expect, especially if on fire.