Quite a remarkable car
It was a 2003 Pontiac Vibe, the first year they were manufactured. Five-speed manual transmission and a moonroof. I bought it new on New Year's Eve at the end of 2002 and took delivery a week later. Not sure how many states/provinces it went to, but I know it made it out to Wyoming and Colorado at least once. Transmission was replaced twice, but that was about all it needed in major repairs, pretty much just routine maintenance beyond that. It took two kids (Rachel and Nicole) off to college, and two kids (Nicole and Stephen) learned to drive stick on it. It was mine until I gave it to Nicole in July 2012 with 322895 miles on it, though the odometer had been stuck at 299999 since a year earlier. We lost track of the mileage after that, but it was Nicole's daily driver for a long commute for a while, and it was Nancy's daily driver as recently as this summer, and we estimate that the total mileage was probably around 450000. We had decided that we weren't going to spend any more money on repairs, so when I started it up at the end of the summer to take it in to get a sticker and the brake pedal went to the floor, we decided that was the end of the line. I had already bought a new Subaru, and this was one car too many, so Nancy called up to donate it to the public radio station.
The above pictures are from the day I picked it up in Brattleboro, and from last Saturday. From this angle, it doesn't even look so bad -- I seem to have aged a lot more than the car did in those 15 years. My parents drove me to get it, and they're both gone now, and for that matter so is Pontiac itself. Today the junkyard guys came and hauled it away. So long, Red Vibe, you served us well.