Mrs. Brad and I recently got a new-to-us car. We don't need three vehicles, so we sold our 2005 Prius. It's 20 years old, but it's been my daily driver since we bought our last car (a 2012 model for Mrs. Brad) in 2014.
Simple, no? I was willing to take far below the Blue Book value if I knew it was going to someone who needed it. It's reliable. It has a newish hybrid battery. Other than the big dent in the front bumper (where I hit a concrete pillar at my workplace parking garage right before the pandemic), the body is in good shape.
It just has a few old-car eccentricities. Things I lived with for years. Simple.
Try explaining that to someone who is considering spending $1,000 on a car (cheap, right? Especially for a reliable daily driver with just a few eccentricities, right? Right? You want to know the eccentricities? Well . . .).
What seemed simple to me sounded a lot stranger when I explained them to the possible purchaser.
"It's not a big deal, but sometimes the dashboard goes dark," I said, wanting to be clear. He looked at me like I'd just said the car had a leaking nuclear reactor core.
"No, it's not that bad. It doesn't affect how the car runs, it just goes dark. And I have a trick to get it back on. And when the trick doesn't work, I just drive the car and park it. Every time that's happened, the dashboard comes on the next time I start it."
Sounds worse than it is, I think.
But the blank dashboard has nothing to do with the engine, it's probably just a short (according to YouTube). That's easy for me to believe. The prospective purchaser could be excused for being skeptical, so I told him the trick that usually works – a trick I discovered on the aforementioned YouTube the first time it happened.
"All you have to do is push the start button, without your foot on the brake," I told him. He nodded, then confirmed that you start the car without your foot on the brake. "Correct," I told him. "Then you push down the "climate" button." I pointed to a button on the center console that controls the heat and air conditioning. He nodded.
"You hold it down for three seconds, then start turning the headlights off and on. Over and over until the headlight indicator comes on. Then you turn off the car, turn it back on and usually the dashboard is on."
Simple, right? No?
He was confused. "What if that doesn't work?"
"Do it again, I guess. When I can't get it to work, I just drive wherever I'm going and eventually, it comes back on."
He wasn't reassured, but I wanted to tell him the other curiosities of my beloved car.
"Oh, sometimes it won't turn off," I told him. He looked troubled, so I added, "There's a fix to that, too."
I had a captive audience.
"So when it won't turn off, you just hold down the power button for a few seconds and the car shuts down," I said. He thought that the was the end, but it wasn't. "That doesn't turn it all the way off, though. The dashboard is still on (in my brain: Irony!), so you take the key fob, put it in this slot next to the steering wheel and pull it out. That stops the car totally."
He looked troubled.
"None of this affects how the car works, though. It works great. And it only happens once in a while."
He asked how often.
"Maybe every few weeks for the dashboard, but only two of three times ever for not being able to turn it off. That almost never happens."
Hey, man. It's a $1,000 car that runs well, if you can ignore that the dashboard occasionally goes dark and once in a great while it won't turn off without a trick.
He was skeptical, but he liked the car, so I told him the two other quirks: You can't unlock the driver's-side door from the outside, necessitating that you crawl through the passenger side to unlock the door. And the trunk has a leak, meaning water gathers in the wheel well for the spare tire. So once or twice a winter (when the insides of the windows are so wet every day that I carried around a towel on the passenger seat to wipe them down), I use a towel and a turkey baster to remove all the water.
A turkey baster is an auto-repair tool of sorts!
He was shaken. He wanted the car, but this seemed complicated. I knew it was, but it was manageable. You just have to remember to start the car without your foot on the brake, hold down the climate button for three seconds, then flick the headlights off and on and off and on. It usually works. You just have to hold the power button down until the engine stops, then insert the key fob and remove it to turn off the car. You just have to climb in through the passenger door to open the driver's side door. You just have to use a turkey baster to remove the standing water around the spare tire a few times a winter.
The prospective buyer – a really good guy who is the brother of a friend –-- was unsure. He said he'd think about it. He said he'd get back to me.
The next day, I got the call. He wanted the car. So I printed out the steps to make the dashboard (usually) work and to turn off the reluctant-to-stop car and inserted them in the glove box.
He bought the car and took it home. I think over the previous night, he realized what I knew: That it's a reliable car with some strange quirks. It's a good buy for what it cost. If you look at it right, it's kind of charming.
At least I hope so. I loved that car and drove it to work every day for 11 years. After the first time the dashboard went dark and the first time it wouldn't turn off, I was OK with those challenges.
Ultimately, my 2005 Prius is like most of us as we get older. Kind of predictable, with some strange quirks that are manageable if you know what you're doing.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
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