Tragedy and Triumph: Our PT Cruisers

My family owns FIVE PT Cruisers!

My passion for PT Cruisers began somewhere in October of 2014 when our only car, which we called “The White Car” kept breaking down. My father got sick of us not having a working car and called me up one day and announced and asked me if he’d like him to buy me a used 2002 PT Cruiser that was purple in color for $4000. Of course I accepted his offer. We needed a car that worked.

I loved that purple PT Cruiser. It had a luggage rack and a sunroof. It was fun to drive too.

We didn’t have the purple PT for long since my daughter Rebekah totaled it in a Colorado Springs snowstorm only a couple months later around Christmas Day I recall. I was in Philadelphia visiting my son Joel with my daughter Annabelle and my dad since I didn’t want Joel to be alone during the holiday season since he was touring with Disney On Ice at the time. It was his first year on tour and it was important to me that Joel had a sense of family during that tour.

When we returned to Colorado Springs, once we got our insurance payment, my dad and my husband and I went to a used car place in Colorado Springs and bought a bright blue 2008 PT Cruiser. Wow…did I love that PT! I had a trailer hitch put on so I could install a bike rack. I was disappointed that there was no luggage rack since we had a ski rack attached to the purple PT Cruiser, but I found a way to attach cross bars and a ski rack. That PT Cruiser gave us about four years of happiness.

Sadly, one early morning in Colorado Springs, while my son was performing with Disney On Ice in Colorado Springs he had to do PR on the local television news at 5 am. I suggested he take my PT Cruiser to the World Arena rather than the broken down Jeep that we were borrowing from my dad for Joel to use since I thought the PT Cruiser would be safer at that hour of the morning. It was a really windy morning and it was about 4:30 am when Joel left our house. Well, my beloved bright blue PT Cruiser never made it to the venue since there was a horrible windstorm and a large vehicle knocked down a traffic light at the entrance to the World Arena parking lot. The wires were still hanging and Joel didn’t see them and when he drove into the parking lot the entire passenger side of the vehicle was destroyed.

At 4:45 am when this happened, Joel left the car, ran into the venue and still was on time to be on the news and be interviewed at 5 am!

After Joel called us, when the news broadcast concluded we learned the bad news. I had no idea that my insurance company would total the vehicle, but of course they determined it was a total loss.

The replacement PT Cruiser - March 2018

The…the funniest thing happened: Someone at my husband’s work named Lynn was selling the same PT Cruiser, same color, everything, less miles, for exactly what the insurance paid us, so we ended up with the exact same car! Of course I had to go get a replacement trailer hitch put on for my bike rack and we were able to put our ski rack on the new bright blue PT. It was like we never had a loss.

My dad loved his steel blue PT Cruiser

My father liked our bright blue PT Cruiser so much that he asked the same used car salesman he bought the purple PT Cruiser from if he could find one for him. So…shortly after that, my dad became the owner of a steel blue 2007 PT Cruiser.

All was good. We had a working car and so did my dad.

Unfortunately, in the summer of 2018, horrible and devastating hailstorms hit Colorado Springs. My husband’s junk car was totally destroyed after the second hailstorm and so was our other car, a Toyota. My dad’s steel blue PT survived but was badly damaged by the hail. He no longer wanted the vehicle, so eventually he went to the Colorado Department of Revenue with me and gave me that car. With the insurance money given to us from State Farm, instead of allowing it to be a total loss, we kept the steel Blue PT, and began looking for a replacement PT Cruiser that was not hail damaged.

While I was looking for a replacement PT Cruiser, I discovered a really funky looking PT Cruiser that was grey and bright yellow painted with flames! When my son Joel saw the photo of it, he wanted it. So..we drove to a home in Denver and my dad bargained with the owner and got the price down for Joel. The owner wanted payment that day and it was a Sunday, so my dad put the sale on his American Express card and then Joel paid him back.

The steel blue, grey, and bright blue PT Cruisers parked in a row

We still kept looking for a replacement PT Cruiser and one day saw a very nice looking grey one that looked so much like the the steel blue PT parked in front of a trailer park near Circle Drive and Janatell in Colorado Springs. I took my husband there to see the grey PT and just as we were getting close to it, I saw the owner about to drive it away! I jumped out of the car and ran over and flagged him down and told him we were interested in purchasing it. We did a quick test drive ant the next day met with George and bought that grey PT Cruiser. We were now the owners of a 2007 grey PT Cruiser that was in perfect condition. It turns out we kept in touch with George via Facebook and learned about a PT Cruiser club from George. He had recently purchased a convertible PT Cruiser.

Rebekah took the grey PT Cruiser on a road trip with her dad at the end of 2020

The grey and the bright blue spent some of the winter of 2022 in Sun Valley

We now had one hail damaged PT Cruiser and three PT Cruisers without hail damage.

Unfortunately, that changed since another horrible hail storm hit Colorado Springs in 2019. My favorite bright blue PT Cruiser was in the shop for a repair when a hail storm hit. It was totaled by our insurance company, but the damage doesn’t look so bad so we kept it anyway. Joel’s flame PT also took some hail damage while his was at the Marickios (our car repair shop), but I paid cash to fix it and didn’t need to file a claim. The worst and most upsetting thing was the grey PT was always in the garage and protected, but the day the hail storm hit, my daughter Rebekah was at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo where she had an internship and the grey PT was hit really hard and the damage was really bad, but the car was drivable.

The “not hail damaged” green PT Cruiser

So…you guessed it…with the insurance money, I bought another PT Cruiser with the insurance money I received from the bright blue and grey PT Cruiser damages. This one I found on Facebook and was sold to me by Steve Maroun and it was shipped from North Carolina to Colorado Springs.

So…now we own three hail damaged PT Cruisers, one repaired from hail damage PT Cruiser (Joel’s) and one not hail damaged PT Cruiser!

We’ve owned seven PT Cruisers total!

Unfortunately, the day I wrote this blog post on 5/30/22, we received the bad news that the steel blue PT Cruiser is pretty much no good and we will have to get it hauled away….so…we will only have four PT Cruisers instead of five. (Update on 5/31/22: Our mechanic is going to look at the steel blue PT again before we make a decision to not keep it. I hope we can keep it.)

I do have my eye on a red Woody PT Cruiser in California….