I "should" have let it go 5 years ago when the Transmission, and then 3 months later the engine gave out. $4000 spent! So, I'm not one to give up easily. But again $4k for a reliable car for 5 years is good money spent.
But - and this is funny - I said I'd be in a better financial position 5 years from then and hoped it'd last for that long. And it's almost to the day 5 years (I remember because it was a couple of weeks before Halloween...)
I do wish it waited just 1 more year, but it did buy me time to save for another car. As the poet Jagger said "you can't always get what you want."
I'm now 49 and I bought it when I was 27. An amazing chunk of my life was spent with that car. My 12 year old daughter teared up when I took that cell phone shot of it being hauled away. And my wife, who isn't a car person by any stretch, touched its roof and said "goodbye old girl" which surprised me.
No, this wasn't just a hunk of metal that took me from A to B, that's for sure. I'm sad, but like you said happy that the parts or some of them will live on in other NXs.