Last Car Syndrome

I was nearly sixty-four, four decades of teaching college writing having corroded whatever patience I once had, and I found myself drowning in self-disgust. My life, once measured in lectures and essays, had narrowed to a single, grotesque question: Camry or Accord? I fretted over it as if I were choosing a confession—Catholic or Presbyterian—with my eternal soul dangling over the dealership lot. The absurdity didn’t escape me. I had real problems: blood markers creeping upward, a rotator-cuff tear ruining kettlebell workouts, bedrooms that needed painting, twin daughters who needed driver’s training, retirement forms stacked like little gravestones, and the scramble to joint bank accounts so my younger wife wouldn’t face probate nightmares. And yet I could not stop watching YouTube reviews and refreshing Reddit threads that compared the new Camry to the Accord.

I vacillated like a madman.

Driving to pick up the girls from high school, I’d spot an Accord and sigh: “Ah, the Accord EX-L in Canyon River Blue. Very peaceful. Not a bad car to die in.” A second voice—practical, bored—would snap back, “It’s a car, not a coffin, dummy!” So I’d argue with myself: “But this will be the last car I ever buy. Surely it is my Death Car.” “God, you’re morbid! How can I live with you? Get away from me!”

The next day I’d see a Camry SE in Heavy Metal and melt. “Look how it fits that color—everything’s right. Under thirty-three K and it feels Lexus-adjacent.” My inner realist would applaud the improvement: “At least you’re not talking about death. Progress.” Then the skeptic: “But the Accord is quieter. I need quiet. And the Accord dealership is walking distance—drop it off, walk home. That’s handy.” Followed by doubt: “Wait—people say the new Accord looks like a Ford Taurus. Can I live with that kind of ridicule?”

It went on and on. My wife learned to read my posture: the slight slump, the hand rubbing the back of my neck—the tell that I was about to launch into Camry-Accord hell. She would cut me off before I even opened my mouth: “Stop right there, buster. I don’t want to hear it. Just make your damn decision!”

For a while I wallowed alone in the torment.

Then one morning I woke up and declared I didn’t need a car at all. I’d driven, on average, three thousand miles a year for the last decade—hardly the mileage of a man who needed a shiny new vehicle. The decision felt radical: my daughters could take the older Accord, my wife the newer one, and I’d borrow a car when necessary. No purchase. No shiny new vehicle gathering dust like a suburban reliquary in the garage. Why buy something to admire between piano practice and Netflix binges? I told myself the choice was genius. 

But after snacking on a virtuous bowl of buckwheat groats with unsweetened soy milk, banana slices, pumpkin seeds, cinnamon, and a dash of manuka honey, the energizing snack snapped me out of my delusion.. Suddenly the whole farce of my deliberation looked naked: I was suffering from Last-Car Syndrome: the unconscious understanding that in my mid-sixties, my next car purchase was essentially my Death Car, so I avoided the purchase like I avoided death. 

Fortified by my power breakfast, I stood up, chest puffed like a man claiming moral clarity, and barked at the ceiling, “Who am I kidding? I’m buying a new car. I deserve it.”
So now it’s only a scheduling question—six months from now, or next week.