The heatbreak of selling your 'first car'

Written by Kristen Hyde: 10-May-2012

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Years of teenage angst and strategic convincing went into procuring my first car. My parents were harder to wear down than a mortar and pestle and they could see through my formulated arguments with Superman-strength X-Ray vision.

Finally, at the tale end of 2007 after three years of extensive hint-dropping and eye-lash batting, they relented. A family friend was selling his Mazda 3 Maxx Sedan and was willing to sell it to me (ahem, my parents) for ‘mate’s rates’. A few months later, ‘Ranga’ was all mine – christened so because the car was the colour of an orangatang.

And that’s how we met.

Sigh, I remember those early days we shared together. It was like being in a blossoming new relationship. We spent the first few months in the throws of young love – Ranga discovering that I like to take corners like a rally car driver and me discovering all Ranga’s quirky dashboard features. We went on little trips together – late night drives to McDonalds and day-trips to the beach. And like all good partners, Ranga always let me choose what I wanted to listen to on the radio.

We had our differences though, like when I got three blown tyres in the space of as many weeks and Ranga refused to fit a newly purchased IKEA couch in the back of the boot. The day I accidently scraped the driver’s side panel along a concrete pillar in an underground car park, I knew we had survived our first big fight.

But we worked through it and our relationship met a milestone – we relocated to Sydney together. Ranga came along, helping me with the move and protecting me against the big smoke. However, I couldn’t protect Ranga against the wayward kangaroo that jumped in front of us on the Hume Highway and put Ranga in a Canberra car hospital for three days.

But after four years together, I decided I needed to spread my wings. The world was calling and this time Ranga couldn’t come with me. As I jetsetted to the USA, Ranga returned to my parents house and the quiet streets of their country town in Queensland. For 15 months, Ranga waited for me to return but when I did, I had changed. I wasn’t the same girl. It wasn’t Ranga, it was me. I wanted to keep travelling and I couldn’t see a future between us anymore. I wrote a Pros and Cons list, I talked to my mum about it and ate a lot of Tim Tams. But the decision was unanimous.

So I made the heart-wrenching decision to break-up with my first car.

Suffice to say, I’m pretty emotional about the whole thing. You’re first car is a big deal – it’s an exciting, coming-of-age experience and I couldn’t have asked for a better automobile to share that with. We had as many arguments as we did adventures and I just hope Ranga’s new driver will realise just how lucky they are. And just how much Ranga doesn’t like kangaroos or underground carparks.

Sniff, where are the tissues...

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