WABE Car Donation Review

“We hope that WABE can help fund a tiny bit of the programming we love.”

After donating our previous station wagon, we bought this car in 2003, from another family in Atlanta, used, but newer and with lower mileage than nearly every other car we’ve ever had. It came with a Dynamo Swim Club front license plate, which is still there, though our family were never members. We wanted a small wagon as a practical car for our family, and it describes the children’s excitement about the new car that they named her Shiny as a distinction from the paint scheme of the other cars they knew! The kids were 5 and 9 years old when we got this car, and later both learned to drive and passed their tests for driver’s licenses in it. Both examiners were impressed to meet a 16-year-old who learned to drive a car with a manual transmission! In the back window are stickers for colleges and graduate schools where they got Bachelors and Masters degrees, and from which our eldest will soon complete her PhD.

Saturn has not existed or manufactured cars or parts for more than a dozen years, and yet we managed to keep the car running all that time. The gearshift lever has been held together with a filed-down binder clip since our daughter was in middle school, because the plastic clips on the shift linkage broke down in the Georgia heat and the only replacement part went all the way into the transmission and was very expensive. We thought we’d replace that part when we inevitably had to replace the clutch anyway after our daughter learned to drive, but her clutch technique, and that of her brother after her, was gentle enough that we never had to make that replacement! The headliner also suffered from the Georgia heat, so we replaced it with Star Wars fabric, complete with X-Wings, Tie-Fighters and the Millenium Falcon, with added structure provided by flexible hoop-skirt rings. At some point we replaced the motors for the front windows, but eventually the rear passenger side window had to be held up with some tape to keep it from just falling down.

This car was our only family car for most of 20 years, rolling over 200,000 miles in 2014, and driving more total miles than the distance from the Earth to the Moon! Shiny has been a member of our family and gone on many trips, long and short, planned and unplanned, with friends and family. Because we worked near home, the car was not a regular commuter, so mostly used to get to school, lessons, practices, rehearsals, camps, and family visits. She didn’t make the trip to California for one college, but did make it to Minnesota for the other multiple times. We have driven the car more than 183,000 of its nearly 262,000 miles, and have kept a record of each and every fill-up in nearly 20 years, watching the gas prices go up and down, but mostly up, from $1.259 in November 2003 to $4.999 in May 2022. This record indicates visits to gas stations in 20 states, as far away as Minnesota and New Jersey. Even at advanced age and mileage, the car still exceeds 30 miles per gallon on the highway! It is hard to say goodbye to a member of the family, but we’ve had a great time together, and we hope that WABE can help fund a tiny bit of the programming we love, most of which we listened to on this car’s radio!

Thank You, David!

90.1 FM WABE is Atlanta’s source for news and local stories. WABE’s programs, podcats, and events inform and connect the millions of listeners throughout the Greater Atlanta region. WABE provides news, entertainment, and information via radio, TV, and on its website. When you donate your car, truck, motorcycle, boat, or RV to WABE, you’ll receive a tax deduction while supporting your favorite Atlanta Public Radio station.

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