Inwood’s Harry Ettling held a proper funeral for his beloved 1982 Honda Civic this weekend, and invited the neighborhood to come out and say goodbye to the iconic pile of rust.

Nicknamed “Bluey,” the car clocked 170,000 miles in the last 30 years, in which time it survived both a major car accident and being flipped during the Washington Heights riots in 1992.

With a large bouquet of flowers on its hood, Bluey was loaded onto a flatbed Saturday and driven to the junkyard as the neighborhood snapped pictures and mourned the loss of Ettling’s epic eye-sore of a vehicle.

Ettling, who wore a suit and top hat to the funeral, told New York Daily News he had to give it up because he was afraid his feet would break through the floor from the rust.

“Everybody in the neighborhood knows this car,” he said. “People have come up to me and said, ‘Ever since I was a little toddler, I’ve been seeing this car on the street.’ And that’s a beautiful thing. I think in that way, Bluey’s influence and his impact on the neighborhood and his memory, if not him, will certainly live on for many years to come, if not, forever.”

(Via Jalopnik)
(Homepage image Sherry Mazzocchi via DNAInfo)