In 1980, I bought my oldest daughter a new Tercel sedan for college. Despite the fact that it was the cheapest car in the Toyota lineup, it was well-made and fun to drive. It had a peppy little engine that was smooth as silk and an excellent 4-speed stick shift. I'd like to be able to report that our Tercel went hundreds of thousands of miles, but it never got the chance. It was the unluckiest car I've ever owned, or heard of.
It started when it was just a few months old. It was parked in a near-empty parking lot when some guy who'd never ridden a motorcycle talked a friend into letting him try riding the friend's high-powered street bike around the parking lot. Predictably, he lost control and slammed the bike into the left side of the Tercel. The rider wasn't hurt badly, but the Tercel needed major body repairs. A few months later, my daughter was driving down a city street when the driver in the next lane to her left tried to switch into my daughter's lane without looking. Once again, the left side of the Tercel sustained major damage and was repaired again. Several months later, the Tercel was parked in front of our house late at night when I heard a huge crash. I ran out and found that the whole left side of the Tercel had been obliterated by a hit-and-run driver. The left rear fender was sticking out perpendicularly and the door and front fender were also torn and gouged. It was beyond Bondo at this point. The dealer had to order an entire Tercel left side to make the repair. Fortunately, my other daughter and her boyfriend had just pulled into our driveway when the Tercel was hit, and drove after the driver (an elderly man) and got his license number. The police contacted him and got a confession, so his insurance paid up.The Tercel now had been in three major accidents in less than two years of ownership, none of which had been my daughter's fault. I'm not superstitious, but in this case, I decided the car was jinxed, so I sold it. Maybe a new owner would have better luck. Nope, the woman I sold it to had it for less than a year, when she was hit head-on by a drunk driver driving on the wrong side of the street. Fortunately she was uninjured, but the poor little Tercel was totaled. It was a wonderful car, and didn't deserve its fate. It's hard to believe a car could be be "born under a bad sign", but that's apparently what happened. Little blue Tercel, RIP.
