My first car was an '02 camry actually. That thing was amazing and would've lasted forever if it wasn't for the awful road conditions where I live. Had it until junior year of highschool where the rust accumulating in the car would've made it cost more to upkeep than to just buy a new car so my dad and I took it to a dealership and let me pick out a new one. I went with an '09 toyota corolla. Me and that car had many adventures and mishaps including numerous deer attacks, gravel cracking the windshield, and getting a skateboard hurled into it on an interstate. None of those things were avoidable and the car got battered to hell but it kept going. The thing was a fighter that would not stop until killed. Had it up to january of this year where literally as I was thinking about how this car would run forever, a deer jumped into me on the way to work and completely smashed my drivers side light, pushed the entire front of the car inwards, and bent the frame. I was going around 50mph and it hit me almost square on in the front so I have no idea how the airbags didn't deploy. I limped the car over to a body shop and learned that all body shops in the area were completely booked for months out. I briefly looked into trying to keep the car even though it had been totaled bc insurance only gave me a little under $4k for it and the used car market was still fucking crazy (glad that it's FINALLY starting to get back to normal now). Decided to just let them keep the car and buy a new one. I bought a 2017 toyota camry which was kind of pricy but I was willing to spend the money on a car that I was proud of after running on my high school junk car for so long.
I felt good about the purchase even though I had to take out a somewhat substantial loan but only a week after I bought the camry some idiot completely disregarded a red light (he wasn't running it, it had been red for a while) and smashed into my wife in her 2012 toyota rav 4 which we had bought only a year prior. Airbags deployed, substantial frame damage, it was fucked. Thankfully the insurance on that one paid out a lot higher but seeing as we had just taken out an auto loan we didn't want to buy another car. So we put that money towards the camry and figured out how to live with one car for a while. It was annoying and it made planning anything at all much harder to do but we made it work. A few weeks ago we found a 2013 Kia Soul that a scrapyard was selling that they had got at an auction. The car had been totaled but literally the damage was just to two bumpers on the car. No frame damage or anything, the insurance company must have just decided it was not worth it to fix so they auctioned it off. The most ironic thing is that the car had been totaled by a deer so a deer started this half year of car issues and a deer finished this half year of car issues. The scrapyard guys fixed it up and then listed it on facebook marketplace with a rebuilt title for $6k. Went to my bank, grabbed the cash, and bought it the very next day. Hopefully this is it for a while because despite both me and my wife being very good drivers (if you don't believe me come on over and visit and I'll trounce your ass in karting), we've been very unlucky with things out of our control and have spent way too much money on car related things.
