Over twenty years ago, tired of all the beaters I’d driven for years, I bought a two-year-old Toyota Corolla with 45,000 miles on it for about ten grand.
Granted, that was only 15,000 fewer miles than my first car, a ’67 Ford Fairlane I bought for (I think) $600. But all those old cars (a Chevy Nova, a Dodge Aspen, and a Mitsubishi Mirage) had far more years on them and usually a cost a good bit more in upkeep, too. I had the Aspen for most of a decade, but it lived in San Francisco and went weeks without being driven.
I bought the Toyota in part for the much ballyhooed durability of the better Japanese makes, and I have to say, nearly 120,000 miles later, it has out-performed expectations. Oh, I’ve spent on a few repairs and had a few flats. If there were any recurring nuisances it was the hubcaps that kept flying off like enraged girlfriends, spinning away in their own orbits. I’ve bought at least two boxes of the cheap hubcaps, and long ago figured out that all four don’t have to match.
Just the two on each side.
I drove the car to Thanksgiving in Minnesota once, taking my old German shepherd Ernie Kovacs along with me, just at the end of his puppydom. As we drove across Nevada he stared out the back window, perhaps wondering at all the miles unraveling behind us, how far we were from home. When we met my wife and mother-in-law at MSP he went berserk. He recognized me as I approached, but we were all bundled up and he was intent on me, so didn’t ID them until doors opened and they stooped inside, where the very air was rent by the furball explosion of him leaping from front to back as he knocked the rearview mirror and us akimbo in his astonishment to meet his mom dog so far away.
Humans! They’re so amazing.
We also visited friends in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Louisville. On our route home we stopped at Graceland, then drove like bats out of hell all the way to Flagstaff in just a bit over a day.
The Corolla has been to Portland and Seattle several times, even up to Vancouver once, several times to Los Angeles, Balboa island in Orange County and perhaps down to San Juan Capistrano. Frequently up to Mendocino and Napa, and countless times up to the Gold Country in the Sierra foothills.
Lots of miles with friends and even more with the backseat serving as the mobile den for four different dogs. On occasion, for guest dogs visiting us, too. A few cats have traveled back there, also, but they were all pretty eager to forget the experience.
It’s strange saying goodbye to a car I’ve had so long. Of course it isn’t like losing a human, or even a pet. But somehow it’s more than tossing out an old sofa, TV, or sweatshirt.
The missus was kind enough to patch holes worn in the seat fabric with heavy-duty denim patches which have held up very well, even as the hounds launch themselves in and out of the vehicle. In the back of my mind I was glad of that, thinking that someday I’d sell the car to a struggling student or maybe a single parent, glad to have reliable if not luxurious transportation. That old four-banger engine just kept on running, so why not?
Then the State of California offered me a cool grand to sell it to them for parts, to get it off the road. Part of the deal is I have to turn it over at least 60 days before the registration is due, or pay for the damn smog check, too.
So it won’t be reliable for someone else for a few more years. Although part of me hopes the salvage yard recognizes a good engine when it sees one, and like a transplanted heart, it will keep running a while longer, for someone else.
That’s probably enough anthropomorphizing—except to say I hope that if any part of the dear old heap does have any mileage left, whoever owns it appreciates its reliability, too.
OmbudsBen 
You’re right, a car is not the same as a person or a pet, but is definitely more than a sofa or a table. We had a scare with our 2005 Camry a few weeks ago (10 years younger than your car!). It has been putting out a puff of blue smoke from a cold start for awhile now, which the car repair people tell us is a sure sign of an oil leak ‘somewhere’. But the oil level never goes down, the car passes smog inspections, so we pretty much ignore it. Then a couple of weeks ago, right after we put a couple of hundred dollars into it, of course, the ‘check engine’ light came on. The manual said, ‘bring to a Toyota dealer asap’. Well, we went to our movie anyway, as the car was driving fine, and took it to our mechanic the next day. (I say mechanic, but it was really Big-O Tires, where we take the cars for tires and brakes and so on.). They checked it out and determined it needed a real mechanic to diagnose, so the following day we took it to a real mechanic, who said it was an emissions leak somewhere in the system. Well, in between Big-O and the mechanic, Ted did some reading on Camrys and the check engine light, and read that the most common issue is an old gas cap. If it has hairline cracks, it can emit fumes, causing the light to come on. So he stopped at Toyota and bought a new gas cap. The mechanic checked it out, said that was likely the culprit (though he would have liked to examine the old cap, which was in the dumpster of our complex), and turned off the light for us. He said, if it comes back on, bring it back. Neither Big-O nor the mechanic charged us, so instead of having to buy a new car (which is what we were thinking might be our next step), Ted spent $30 on a gas cap. That’s a very happy ending.
All of that is a very long winded way to say that I was very sad at the thought of getting rid of our Camry (and a car payment in our future). It’s the first new car I have ever bought, and I love it, blue smoke and all. But I won’t cry or be heartbroken when the time comes, I’ll be OK.
BTW, our Camry also used to shed wheel covers/hubcaps, as they are the ones that are not bolted on. The car was just slightly out of alignment, due to us not rotating the tires often enough, and also there was something with the struts that needed fixing (as if I know what that means). Once we got those two things fixed, it stopped shedding hubcaps. I know this is not useful to you with your Corolla anymore, since it is no longer your car, but for future reference, it may be a warning sign that something is wrong.
I love the gas cap story!
Life needs more of them!
What did the wheel covers in for us was potholes. The time I remember most vividly was driving across the country and meeting my wife and mother-in-law at MSP airport to visit family where I grew up, Rochester, Minnesota.
As we got on the freeway for me to drive them back to the airport we happened to be in the neighborhood, near the “Miracle Mile” shopping center, where I lived as a young boy. Collecting baseball cards, crossing the bridge at that very on ramp on my way to the public library, etc.
We hit a pothole as I accelerated to merge and a wheel cover went flying off to the snowy ditch at right.
Normally, I’d have stopped to retrieve it, but that day I left a little something behind in my old stomping grounds.