You're smart to hang on to your old car

Vindication has come, at long last, and from a surprising source.

While not my typical go-to hub for personal affirmation, I want to thank the automotive consulting firm Edmunds. The firm's recent news makes those of us who drive old cars look like very smart people instead of very eccentric people.

According to Edmunds, "older used cars" are suddenly hot, being in short supply. The shift is due to the auto industry meltdown beginning in 2009, which led to huge manufacturing declines, coupled with the federal government's Cash for Clunkers program at the same time. The latter took nearly 700,000 cars out of the nation's supply.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which first reported the Edmunds news, noted that the average price for a used car has edged up since 2005, especially among cars priced below $10,000.

I'm already sitting taller in my dog-haired, soda-stained car seat.

My family owns not one, but three, old cars. All have reached their teen years; all are deep into six-figure mileage. Many people, some of them my mother, wonder when I'm going to act like a grown-up professional and buy a Prius like all my friends.

The answer is, I hope not to for a long time. I see many advantages to driving mature cars.

I am stress-free in parking garages and at the grocery store. A new ding? Who cares?

I have no car payments.

I know how to work my radio.

Besides, journalists are almost expected to be driving dumps, and who would I be to betray my beloved profession?

While the average length of time drivers keep a new vehicle is about six years, there are other keepers like me, driving highways and side streets alongside you, carefully avoiding the gaze that says, "Seriously?"

You will hate parking lots, he said. And, if you buy a new car for your teenager, you may unwittingly be cheating him or her of a genuinely satisfying rite of passage.

"I paid for my own first car," said Moody, the father of a teen and a preteen. It was a 20-year-old Buick Skylark. He paid $300.

"Years later, and I mean years later, my wife and I bought a car together — a Toyota Camry with leather seats and a sunroof. We were so thrilled to get that car, to earn enough money to buy that car.

"Buying a new car for teens can turn them into people who feel entitled."

While car safety is a huge concern for our kids, he noted that air bags, seat belts and antilock brakes have long been standard.

Jerry Kohl is a no-pretense kind of guy, too. He's crazy about his 2001 Subaru, which had 256,704 miles on it as of Monday.

"It's not pretty, but it's very functional," said Kohl, 66, who lives 6 miles from Grand Marais, Minn. The car's all-wheel drive is essential during winter.

Before this one, he drove an '87 Buick LeSabre for 13 years. He loved that one, too.

His friends, most of whom drive newer pickups, rib him regularly. "When are you going to get a new car?" they ask.

They know the answer.

"It's part of my notion of trying to live simply," Kohl said. "If a pair of my jeans gets a hole, I patch it. I guess I'm a little eccentric."

No, no, Jerry.

Trust in Edmunds. You're not eccentric. You're smart.