Just a Story about a Car

Back in 2015, I bought a used Fiat 500 Pop.

The Hyundai had been totaled in 2012 and the old CR-V was being ... problematic. I'll admit I was acting on impulse a bit and really frustrated, so I didn't do the full due diligence that I should have, but the price wasn't bad despite it being a fairly basic model. I'd had a rental Fiat 500 Sport a few months before and really enjoyed driving it. This one didn't have some of the bells and whistles, but it was still fun to drive. It was not fun to maintain. Over the next five years, it increasingly gave me trouble including a transmission issue that (after I'd paid to have it fixed) popped up as a recall.

During COVID, with no-one driving it and the car sitting on the street with a long list of problems for the mechanic to eventually look at, I decided to cut my losses and sell it. The 2021 value of a 2012 Fiat 500 Pop wasn't much, but I took Peddle.com's offer and a few days later a guy from Baltimore came and picked it up. I returned the plates to the Motor Vehicle Administration — due to COVID protocols, I needed an appointment and they had a guy sitting at card table out front of the MVA building waiting to collect them.

At that point, all we had were the memories, including a few of Celeste learning to drive.

Back in 2017, we'd gone down to Louisiana for Thanksgiving, including a trip over to Pass Christian where I remember my dad letting my brother and I practice driving on fairly empty back roads well before we had licenses. I came back thinking it was a good idea to let Celeste get some supervised time behind the wheel before she got her permit, so when she was (I think) 14, we headed down to an empty parking lot in the park and traded seats. We went over how to turn the car on and shift (automatic transmission), as well as how to use the pedals. Everything was going well until Celeste was ready to start and realized she could barely see over the steering wheel. We decided to wait a little bit longer...

About two years later with permit in hand, Celeste got a fair amount of her 60 hours of practice in the Fiat … at least until the day that she stopped in traffic and the wind shifted or something and a bit of smoke blew from the engine back across the car. (Burning oil was one of its issues at that point, along with some other engine issues.) She refused to drive it after that.

One other fun memory: While parallel parking the Fiat in front of the house, she somehow managed to hit the gas, jump the curb, and run into a pin oak that the city had recently planted in the side yard's strip between the sidewalk and street. The tree was a little crooked, but we were able to right it with no lasting damage (no damage to the car either).

In the middle of April, however, that same Fiat came back into our lives, sort of.

I received a weird letter from USAA informing me that they had confirmed with the MVA that the loan on the Fiat was paid off and the lien released. I thought that was pretty strange giving that I'd paid it off in 2018 and had at that time received the lien-release letter and half of the title. Of course, I'd also sold the car in 2021. A week or so after that, I get an official MVA envelope with a duplicate title. Weird.

So I call up USAA to see what's going on and they said there was some issue between computerized systems and the MVA was putting USAA back on titles as a lienholder. In those cases, they were informing the MVA that the loan was paid off and the lien released. MVA would then send out a clear title. As far as USAA was concerned, everything was clear on their system, so they suggested contacting the people who bought the Fiat.

I sold it online to Peddle.com, who basically acted as a broker for Copart, which is who actually picked up the car. Once I got contact information for Copart, I learned that my old Fiat had been sold overseas … and was last seen in Ukraine. No idea where or in whose hands, but I hope it's doing okay. (And if it's been conscripted into the Russian army, hopefully it's up to its old tricks and frustrating them.)

After reaching out to the MVA with all this information, they said to just send the title back. Hopefully the car will then disappear from my online account before I get dunned for not having it registered.