As of today, I’ve had my car, a 2021 Subaru Crosstrek, for six years. I paid it off this year on April 10.

Subaru Crosstrek at House Lake
My Crosstrek parked at House Lake State Forest Campground, a little over a year after I got it.

It’s been a good car. I’ve got 75,788 miles on it. Soon after I got it, I drove it several hours north to move away from home and start a new job. Since then I’ve used it for road trips from Michigan to Niagara Falls, Quebec City and southern West Virginia, and once boarded it onto the S.S. Badger for a ferry ride across Lake Michigan. In my last 2,859 miles, I’ve gotten 28 miles per gallon.

My first car was my mom’s gold 2001 Honda Accord. I drove it for about four years, using it to commute to summer jobs, community college and then off to state college. I crashed it only once along the way. It entered into terminal decline on Aug. 26, 2020, when I embarked on a round of DoorDash deliveries and noticed a horrible groan when I turned the wheel. As it turned out, the power steering fluid was leaking. One mechanic tried to fix it but failed, and I spent a while driving around with a can of power steering fluid in the backseat to top it off when it got low. Before long I noticed a nail in a tire, and that was the end of mom’s Accord.

I came home with the Subaru Crosstrek on Sept. 29, 2020, about a month after that whole sequence began. In the year or so leading up to this, I’d been romanticizing the retro two-tone look of the old Subaru Outbacks and lamenting the homogenous bubbly form they’ve resigned themselves to today. This Crosstrek was firmly a step into that homogenous, bubbly world, but practicality won over aesthetics, and I’m glad I allowed it to, because it’s served me very well. It’s a reliable go-kart for someone with an outdoorsy bent who doesn’t care to think about their car.

Parked car
Parked at a winery near Traverse City.

I’ve rear-ended one car with it. We were on the way home from Thanksgiving on a snowy night, and I slid into the car in front of me when they slowed down to turn into their driveway. They were clearly high, and we both went our separate ways, but a piece of my car must have fallen onto the road without me noticing. I bought a replacement piece a couple years later but still haven’t gotten anybody to install it for me.

Broken piece

I also got a bird stuck in the grille in 2021 while driving down a dirt road in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It darted in front of me and somehow just got sucked in there. I felt so bad and didn’t know what to do. It ended up dying in there, and I pulled it out later in the day. I’ll spare you a picture.

Finally, someone keyed the passenger side while it was parked at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport between Sept. 15 and Sept. 22, 2024. I haven’t done anything about it yet.

Keyed car

I got this car around the time that Michigan started reissuing its vintage license plates. I’ve gone through a few of them, but think I’ve landed on one I have to keep: the plate for the 250th anniversary of America, which reuses the great design of Michigan’s 1976 bicentennial plate and is only available this calendar year.

  1. EGZ 1087 (the “Pure Michigan” plate, default as of 2013)

EGZ 1087

  1. 6PGN24 (first issued in 1965; became the first reissue in 2021)

6PGN24

  1. 37AAS9 (first issued in 1954; reissued in 2024)

37AAS9

  1. AAK65P (this year’s redo of the bicentennial plate)

AAK65P

Here are a few of my chief grumbles with the car:

Finally, I went back through all my receipts and emails — here’s all the maintenance I have a record of:

Total recorded maintenance expenses so far: $1,641.19. If I remember correctly, the unrecorded 47,000 miles between 2021 and 2024 only consisted of regular oil changes. I’ve also replaced the front wipers a couple of times.

Overall, I’m grateful to my former self for picking this car. I haven’t found myself yearning or lusting after other cars in any significant way, and whenever I do, it’s easy to remind myself of something I like about the Crosstrek. Here’s to another six years?