The Best Car Ever

Our little Toyota FJ Cruiser is a regular item in our blog postings. Pictures, especially of the time and temperature are featured in all kinds of posts.

We bought the car in February of 2007. It’s very first road trip was that May. We drove up to Oregon to visit a few Pinot Noir producers we liked. 2007 was our first year making Pinot Noir and we wanted to pick the brains of people who made it the way we liked it.

We’ve used the car to move barrels, one fits in the back perfectly. We also use it to move cases of wine. We can get in about 20 cases from the warehouse, or about 15 packages to go to UPS. It also hauls us to vineyard sites and can get up any road we throw at it no matter how rough.

It passed 91000 miles this month and the title showed up. It’s paid for. No major problems. The front end suspension needs a tune up that will run about $400 and we put new tires on it at 50,000 miles. Other than that it’s been regular maintenance. It still gets just about 19-20 miles to the gallon on gas.

The topper is I went to check Blue Book value on the car after a friend mentioned how much he saw used cars FJ’s selling for. I was blown away. With our miles and condition the retail is $19,200. I paid $23,500 for it new. We’re not planning on selling it anytime soon though. It’s been a great car and a key part of making Stefania Wine go.