My beloved BMW

was sideswiped, scraped and gouged by a utility truck while parked around the corner this afternoon. It's so sad. The thing is, it's perfectly drivable, it just looks like crap. The car is now 13 years old, has 185K miles on it, and has some kind of front end issue and a few other incipient problems. It doesn't seem like it makes financial sense to spend a lot of money on it. It also doesn't make sense to buy a new car while I'm unemployed and living in a place that's so hazardous to cars. I think the sensible thing to do would be to take the insurance money and put it in a new-car-someday fund, while I continue to drive my defaced car at least until I graduate and move away. But the sensible thing bums me out.

I kind of want to spend the money to fix everything because I'm fond of the car. Maybe it's not that silly to spend $5-7K to make it almost-like-new instead of spending two or three times that on a late model used car that isn't even a swell-o BMW. But there's that 185K miles. I know those engines regularly make it to 250K and beyond. I know you can replace an engine for far less than the cost of a new car. So how far does it make sense to go down that line? Till I can afford a super cool new 1-series?