Faults:

Maintenance, evaporation system.

General Comments:

Madame Blueberry, my dad's stick Prizm, was our 3rd and final Prizm purchase. She was 3 years old and low mileage for her age the day she replaced our little Patti as the little workhorse car. Dad's the only one that knows how drive a stick in my family. She had the same engine as Bluebell, due to being the same model and age, but as a stick, she was a bit different. In addition, she wasn't a true LSi, even though she had an LSi trunk lid. She lacked some of the features our other Prizms had, like a folding back seat, cruise control, tachometer and other LSi things in '02.

My dad called it "the slickest shifting manual you'll ever drive" and "fun to drive". He finds sticks that shift right a joy to drive, from what I know. Bluebell and Blueberry had one difference each under the hood, so Dad said. Bluebell, as an LSi, has cruise control, which Blueberry didn't have, but the latter, due to her stick shift, had a clutch under the hood. Bluebell, as an automatic, doesn't have that kind of clutch. Blueberry had wheel covers, unlike Bluebell's fancy wheels.

When I was in college, I talked on my mom on the phone and she told me about Dad crashing Blueberry, who was declared totalled, that way. My last Blueberry ride was heading back to college after a weekend at home. That college is about an hour from home, so I lived there all week and left Friday or sometimes Saturday (if there was an event I wanted to attend in that area Saturday) and returned to the college Sunday night or Monday morning. My first class Monday was later on in the day. Dad got a Cobalt to replace Blueberry and we still have Colleen (the Cobalt's named, too). Dad loves his Chevies.

Faults:

Evaporation system issues, exhaust system problems, maintenance, needing body work, oil burning.

A clunk that came after she sat in the yard for months to a time the past year, which think is due to something getting dry. It only happens when she's really steered and we think is reduced from what it was at the beginning of this month.

General Comments:

After about 8.5 years of Prizm ownership, my family found out '02 was the last model year, so in October '01, we got an '02 Chevy Prizm. Due to the Dark Blue-Green color, she was named Miss Bluebell. She's been babied a lot of her life, not driven as much as our little Patti (when Patti was on the road) or her successors. However, except for the past year, she hasn't sat enough to have problems that happen with cars not driven much. She has a tow hitch that's been used to pull a 100 pound boat (sometimes full of camping stuff) or my dad's wood splitter. Like Patti previously, Bluebell's our Old Reliable now.

All of our Prizms have had door handles break. Just today, Bluebell's new inside driver's door handle was ordered. It broke last week. Though she's been my mom's car since my dad bought his since-totaled stick Prizm (outwardly looked just like Bluebell except for her fancy wheels), we've all driven her. I drove her when I was 16 and the worst stuff I did was drive into a ditch and put a scratch on Madame Blueberry's (her lookalike) rear bumper with Bluebell's front.

Though Bluebell was rustproofed, her rear end and front fenders rusted. She had to have a new hood due to ice falling on it and new front fenders due to deer dents and rust on her old ones. One time, we went on a Sunday drive in Bluebell (she's always been our fun and sometimes, Sunday car) and hit a deer. The dent on the other side looked like a deer dent, we realized, so she must've had a deer butt that went unnoticed in the dark. Her dented fenders and inspection running out kept her sitting for months within the past year. She sat all last winter due to her fenders, then in spring, her inspection ran out (in a previous year she was driven with an inspection sticker that had expired) and due to her catalytic converter, she couldn't pass emissions. All summer, she sat at a garage due to them not having clearance from my family to fix her. But this fall, a different garage fixed her. No more check engine light and inability to pass emissions inspection. Except for the clunk, she drives just like always. She's still a purr machine.