Oakland University senior Jacob Holm hopes to give his 1989 Toyota Camry a sendoff it deserves – a sort of Viking funeral involving power tools and target practice. With a fast approaching deadline to get rid of it, what began as an overnight parking dilemma snowballed into a $700 headache and a plan for a cathartic act of closure.

Holm bought the blue sedan about four years ago for around $2,000.

“It treated me great,” he said. “I was going to drive it until it just gave out on me.”

Over the last several months, a few consecutive incidents set the car on an ill-fated path. One snowy evening last December, Holm left a friend’s house and tapped his brakes to test the road conditions. The harmless move ended with a low-speed fender bender.

“It wasn’t even a stranger,” he said. “It was just my buddy. He didn’t look, I guess.”

The collision left the Camry’s rear end caved in and the taillight badly bent. Holm parked it in his parents’ garage to prevent further damage, but months of sitting idle brought new problems.

“I was trying to fix it, but it wasn’t really quite working,” he said. “I thought, ‘All right, I think I’m just going to have to get rid of this thing.’”

By spring, his parents had grown tired of the sight of the damaged car on their property. When his sister’s graduation party approached, they gave him an ultimatum: move it or lose it.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to OU. They have the Hillcrest parking garage. It’s long-term parking,’” Holm said. “There’s a boat on a trailer that’s been there as long as I can remember. I figured they were cool with letting people park there.”

Holm used a parking space in the garage’s lower level as an infrequent makeshift workspace over the summer. He made minor repairs and occasionally drove the Camry around to keep it functional. The car was registered, plated and insured, and he planned to sell it after returning from summer vacation and buy a new vehicle.

Then, during the first week of the fall semester, the Camry disappeared.

“I show up, and it’s gone,” Holm said. “I thought, ‘Either it got stolen or it got impounded. Either one is kind of not ideal.’”

A visit to the Oakland University Police Department confirmed his suspicion. The car had been towed after being marked “abandoned.” Holm was told officers had placed a tracker on it two days prior and found it hadn’t moved – enough to justify impoundment under Michigan law.

“That’s fine. You can do that, I guess,” Holm said. “It’s just frustrating that they didn’t tell me. There was no email, no mail, no text, no call. No notice.”

By the time he returned from vacation and went to it, the car had been in the lot for a week. The $700 retrieval cost was nearly half of what he originally paid for it. “Now, if I wanted to make any money on it, I’d have to overcome that $700 hurdle,” he said. “Otherwise, I’m just losing.”

Holm paid the fee and reclaimed the Camry. He doesn’t deny that he left the car on campus property longer than most, but he believes better communication could have spared him the loss. 

“It’s kind of crazy to me that they’re not required to inform the owner,” he said. “I get that it’s OU’s property, but I would’ve appreciated being notified.”

Despite his frustration, Holm tried to maintain perspective.

“I don’t want it to come across like I wasn’t in the wrong,” he said. “I get that I shouldn’t have left it there so long. The only thing I really have a gripe with them about is that they didn’t notify me.”

Now, with the Camry back in his driveway and an early October deadline from his parents to remove it, Holm faces the final chapter of his four-year relationship with the car. Scrapping it might be the only practical option, though he has entertained a more dramatic sendoff.

“I called up a bunch of buddies, and I got them all to agree that if we divide up the $700 between ourselves, in return for everyone pitching in and paying me back for the fee, we’ll just have a day of blowing this thing up,” he said. “You know, take it somewhere, shoot it with some guns, chop the roof off with a Sawzall… just have some fun with it.”

That plan, for now, has hit a snag. Holm said the group would need significant space, and the few leads he found backed out because of potential noise complaints and hunting-season conflicts.

“I haven’t found anyone with land who’d let us do it,” Holm said. “So I might just be out the money.”

As he weighs how best to part with the 36-year-old blue Camry, Holm reflects on the prospect.

“I think of it like, if I wanted to go to a concert, I’m paying $70 or more for a couple hours of fun,” he said. “I feel like it’s the same thing. Instead, I pay $70 or more for a couple hours of fun blowing up a car. That sounds more fun than a concert anyways, you know?”

He expects the car will be gone soon, one way or another.