Sayonara Sentra

I recently bid a tearful farewell to my 96 Nissan Sentra. We'd been through a lot together.

I bought her from my step-dad in Texas seven years ago. He took me to a parking lot and I spent half an hour learning how to drive a stick shift. Then I drove her 22 hours back to Minneapolis. Since then we went all over the country. New Oreans, New York City, Fargo, you name it. The other day the last scraps of the front bumper finally fell off, taking the license plate with them. I decided to call it. Towards the end she wasn't looking too pretty. Had I made an online listing for her, it would have looked something like this:

Features:

• No front right turn signal

• No dash lights

• Odometer stuck at 153,000 for the last several years

• No speedometer

• No front bumper or license plate

• No catalytic converter

• Cloth on the ceiling falling and held up with safety pins

• Hood half-black from paint peeling

• Passenger side fender held together with rivets

• Tape player works (above 20 degrees fahrenheit) but display doesn't so you have to scan for a radio station until you find one you know

• No A/C

• Multiple leaks in the roof onto driver's seat and front passenger seat

• Power locks, but they sometimes lock themselves in temperatures below 20 degrees Fahrenheit

• No emergency break

• Check engine light has been on the past several years

• No passenger side airbag

• Burns oil, but not too bad

• Poor acceleration

• Half a tank of gas

• Spare key

Instead I just traded it in for the scrap price. Figured there weren't too many people looking for a putter with no speedometer or dash lights that was illegal to drive because it had no catalytic converter and needed new plates. I'm sure no one would have loved her like I did anyway.

Rest in peace, my beauty. I hope you come back as a commerical airliner so you can finally see the world beyond the ocean. And on that note, I recently renewed my passport, so perhaps we'll meet again after all.