Saturday night, I got a phone call - my wife had run off the road. She said she had a large bruise on her face, and she thought both of the headlights were smashed.
I arrived to find her dazed and giddy, sitting in an ambulance, with no bruise on her head. We rushed her to the ER anyway, where they pronounced that she should take some Advil and sleep it off.
After making sure she was safe and (mostly) unharmed, I cried over the car.
Apparently, she was driving along at ~35mph, when the weather got bad and she began to fishtail. She took her hands off the steering wheel and feet off the pedals, covered her upper body, and let the car go where it was going to go - which happened to be a pretty deep ditch. I might've recommended braking, but I wasn't there and that might be a bit presumptuous of me.
Right now it's at a towing yard. The owner is a crook, wanted to charge me $700 to get my car back. I cursed him down to $500, which is still highway robbery, but I'll have it back tomorrow morning.
A brief inspection revealed the headlights are not actually smashed, but the front plastic bumper cover is pretty thoroughly destroyed. The airbags did not deploy. The frame around the radiator is bent in a little, and the radiator itself appears to have the slightest bend. I didn't see any fluids leaking. The driver wheel is at a bizarre angle. At a glance I was able to see that it will, at the very least, need a driver tie rod assembly and lower arm assembly, and probably a bunch of other bits that belong in that area. Passenger side looks alright at a glance.
For various reasons, we've decided not to involve the insurance company. Over the next few days I'm going to give it a thorough inspection and see if it's worth saving. I'm leaning toward yes, but it's not going to be back on the road any time soon.
In the mean time, I'm looking for a beater to drive while I work on it, something preferably no more than $1500, with <1k being ideal. I can probably travel up to 4 hours away from ~Enosburg/Richford VT, which puts most of NH, upstate NY and possibly northern MA within my area of search. Closer is better. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated:
Local craigslist:
https://burlington.craigslist.org/search/cta
https://plattsburgh.craigslist.org/cto/5454501673.html
^ Civic Hybrid. Owner is feeling things out. Says it needs nothing, but not sure if selling yet.
https://burlington.craigslist.org/cto/5470470533.html
^ Echo. Not fond of automatic transmissions, not really the car I want, and the price is a bit higher than I want, but it looks clean and reliable.
https://burlington.craigslist.org/cto/5469965570.html
^ Good looking old Corolla
https://burlington.craigslist.org/cto/5449511094.html
^ Cheap Civic, might've been abused though.
There are a few clean Civic Hybrids in the ~$3500 range that are tempting me, but I really don't have the funding for that right now. Not ruled out entirely, but it would be tough, given that I just paid for a bunch of classes. I might be tempted to spend a little more for a good VX/HF/HX, too, or a clean Echo or Corolla 5MT. I'm wary of automatic transmissons with more than ~150k.
EDIT:
https://burlington.craigslist.org/cto/5437777074.html
^ Claims it "knocks sometimes when idling". The valves on Honda's hybrids can be pretty loud, especially if they've drifted out of spec. I might go and give this one a listen.