i have an epic subaru outback story.
back in like april or may or something i crashed my bmw 325xi and parked it in my garage to slowly buy parts to repair it (bmw parts are expensive and i am poor and in college)
in the meantime i bought a red 199something legacy outback for $900 and drove it for 14,000 miles in three months. when i purchased the car it had three different kinds of tires (they were all new though) scrapes and dents on every body panel and the interior and most of the trim was falling apart. the selling points were
"the radio mostly works and it has been recently inspected"
i did not change the oil. one day on my way to work i rear ended a pickup truck, crushed the radiator, smashed the rad support against the engine and belt pulleys, crushed the hood and left fender, shattered the battery and bent the fucking frame on the left side and broke the windsheild and DROVE the car to work (with no coolant in the engine) there i picked up some tools and showed off my fucked up ride to my fellow employees (i am a mechanic) and then i DROVE it to the junkyard down the street where i bought exactly $160 in parts off another outback, continued to drive the car down the street to a vacant lot with construction equipment parked in it. i used two 3500lb ratchet straps and a "borrowed" (stolen) steamroller to pull the front end of the car "straight" (straighter than it was after i hit the truck) after i got the front end straight enough i installed a new radiator, headlights, hood, fender, coolant expansion tank, battery, and some other odds and ends on the car (remember i was working with hand tools in a fucking parking lot) once i finished the car i started that peice of shit up and drove it back to the junkyard to drop off all the scrap i had pulled off the car (its worth money) then i drove the car (still with NO FUCKING COOLANT) back to work and poured a small amount of water in the radiator (i figured it would eventually start to like, overheat, or something) then later that day i drove the car to class.
i continued to drive the car, in its mostly wrecked state, for about 3000 more miles. i never did change the oil, although i did eventually pour some iced tea, a bottle of pepsi some guy gave me and some water into the cooling system to top it all the way off. i also drove the car 75+ miles daily, in mid summer, sometimes in stop and go traffic with no cooling fans to pull air through the radiator. i would turn on the heat to bring my engine temps down and it melted the fucking plastic around the vents in the car.
the only other maintanence i did to that car involved replacing a seized caliper, and the brake pads on just the front right of the car, after driving with the pads metal to metal for 700+ miles, i did not replace the brake rotor. also a few lug nuts fell off. so i put a few new ones on. and i removed the air filter housing and assembly because it rattled and that annoyed me. so for most of the time i drove that car it had no air filter. and two of my fender linings removed themselves. so did some door trim. also one day the oil pan developed a pretty serious leak because of a hole in the side of it, so i put JB weld over the hole.
also i got drunk and threw alot of empty glass containers at it, jumped it, drove it over lots of things at high speed and in general just ripped the fuck out of it.
in summary, the subaru outback, with its 14x,xxx miles, several accidents and only minimal, cheap maintancence was quite possibly the most resilient fucking car i have ever owned. it was cheap to fix, simple to repair, and very fucking difficult to kill. in fact, its not even dead. i just no longer needed the car anymore so i towed it through some mud and into my woods with a tractor so i dont have to look at its crooked fucking smile anymore. i could probably walk out there any day, throw a jump box on the battery and fire that peice of shit right up.
i highly recommend the subaru outback.
