Beater

We bought the “blue beast” in the summer of 2004.

Well actually, we leased it in the summer of 2004. The year before we’d traded in my wife’s 1994 Nissan Maxima for a 5-speed manual 2003 Honda Civic. We had two daughters, 3 and barely 3 months old, and were ready to trade up to something new. The Civic wasn’t huge, but it was good for a family of four. Plus we got a hell of a deal on the financing at 1.9% for 5 five years. Fit into our budget. My Nissan pickup was only four years old, so we were set on vehicles. We thought that our family unit was complete and that this car would last us several years, giving us room to grow.

But that all changed in the summer of 2004.

Turns out we weren’t done growing as a family and in July of 2004 we found out we were having another baby. This was quite a surprise as we didn’t see that coming. We saw ourselves as a family of four. A family of five? We weren’t Amish, or Catholic. It was the baby curveball we did not expect. But once we had the first ultrasound there was no denying that tiny baby chilling in my wife’s womb, occasionally kicking and the ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump of its heartbeat. Like it or not, baby number three was on its way.

As soon as we found out the baby was going to be a boy, we realized we had a lot of planning to do. Turning one of the girls’ bedrooms into a nursery, buying a bunk bed and having the girls share a bedroom, getting new furniture for the living room while we could afford it, and most importantly how to fit three small kids and their car seats into the back of a 2003 Honda Civic. That last one was a doozy as we didn’t have a shrink ray that would make them 1/3 their original size. We realized pretty quickly our beloved ’03 Civic had to go. We were evolving into a minivan family.

We headed back up to Gurley Leep Honda in Elkhart, IN to see what sort of creative financing we could work out. We couldn’t afford the down payment and a $400 car payment as I was the only one working full-time. And that sweet interest rate we got the year before was non-existent. They offered the option to lease a brand new 2004 Honda Odyssey. After the initial down payment it would be $249 a month for 36 months. Then we’d have the option to buy it outright at the end. In hindsight I would have figured out a way to get the down payment money some other way and finance the van, but when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place you go with what “looks” like the best option. So we drove home in our “blue beast”, and they took the Civic as a trade-in towards the money down and what was left to pay on it was a wash.

We were set with a vehicle built for a family of five. Room for two baby seats and a booster for our oldest. While the Odyssey wasn’t the top ‘o line, it was mid range luxury; CD player, A/C, cruise, power windows, and an entertainment system with DVD player. That DVD player saw a hell of a lot of action through the years. Between The Simpsons, Pixar, Spongebob, and Avengers : Earth’s Mightiest Heroes we heard more movies than music over the last 21 years we’ve had it. That made for much more pleasant family trips, and surprisingly very little arguments about what they’d watch.

One thing, though. The 2004 Odyssey didn’t offer windows in the sliding doors. There were the driver side/passenger side door windows that went down, and two tiny vents in the very back that opened. This meant that the van would get stuffy quick, and over time when the AC started to take longer to cool, that van was very warm in the summer time. Starting in 2005 Honda made the sliding doors with power windows as well(if only the boy would have arrived in 2006 instead of 2005.)

The blue beast has seen a lot of action over the course of nearly 21 years in the service of our family. Many family trips to Indianapolis, Cincinnatti, Brown County, IN, Michigan, New York, and the first year my wife took school pictures the Odyssey was her chariot down to Kentucky, North Carolina, and beyond. She’s even been up to Canada when spent a week in Kingsville, Ontario. Three miniature schnauzers have donned the seats to vet appointments and haircuts, as well as drives into town just to stick their heads out the window so the wind could blow through their blustery beards.

One particular family vacation to Brown County, IN for Thanksgiving was particularly memorable when our son -about ten minutes into the 3 1/2 hour drive home- threw up all over himself in a brown spray of recently eaten chocolate donuts. His ruined clothes laying on the side of the road somewhere and a trip to Walmart was scheduled for some sweatpants, sweatshirt, and new shoes. There was something about that van that caused our son to be a little weak in the gut, as that happened on more than one occasion.

My wife drove the van for the first ten years we had it. I drove my truck until 2005 when we sold it. I used part of the cash to pay it off, while what was left went to pay cash for a 1998 Honda Accord. I liked my Accord, but I secretly wanted to drive the van. I liked sitting behind the wheel as it felt like a tank compared to my Accord. I drove it for about 6 months, until my wife got the school pic job with Strawbridge. She took the van back so she could haul all of her equipment and the Accord returned to me. In the fall of 2015 we bought my wife a 2013 Ford Flex, and the van returned to me.

It wasn’t fancy, but it was a very utilitarian vehicle. You had plenty of room for hauling stuff. The third row folded flat and you could take the middle seats out. That left a large space for hauling stuff. We fit a love seat in there for my daughter’s apartment, as well as a whole sectional couch. Amps and guitars have been moved around in the past as well.

A few years back the paint started peeling off. I took it to a car wash, in one of those bins where you wash it yourself with the high-powered sprayer. As I was rinsing it off I noticed the water was blowing chunks of paint off the van, just above the sliding doors. I thought, “Oh shit!” Not long after that I saw another 2004 Honda Odyssey that looked like a spotted cheetah with bits of paint coming off the hood. Turns out that was an issue with that year of van. The CD player stopped working about 12 years ago, and the headphones that were there to let the kids listen to the DVD so we didn’t have to hear it crapped out even before that.

But these were minor things. We’ve replaced the timing belt twice(last time as recently as 2021 before our New York trip.) In 2019 I dropped almost a grand in it to replace the entire suspension system(when we got it back it felt like the van sat about 8 inches higher.) In October of 2020 the transmission took a crap. Instead of saying goodbye we decided to spend the $2,200 on a new transmission. It was cheaper than financing a new vehicle. So for all intents and purposes, that van was pretty much ready for a few more years of service.

In 2021 our son was in drivers ed. The van was the vehicle he learned to drive in. He got his license that summer, and my wife and I bought 2008 Honda Accord as she thought she wanted a car which would put me in the Flex. Turns out she didn’t want the car, so it is now my vehicle. For the last nearly 4 years the van has been our son’s vehicle. I find it fitting, since he’s the reason we bought it 21 years ago.

It’s not pretty, but it still runs like a beast. I let my son and his girlfriend take my car to Chicago last Sunday for a concert, so Monday morning I drove the blue beast to work. Starts right up, no stutter. Runs like clockwork with paint peeling, one of the sliding doors not working, and a hefty 250,000+ miles on the odometer.

I’m not sure, but I think it might outlast us if the body holds up.