Car-Ma Revisited

I've been looking for what seems like *ages, trying to replace my current car, which is likely on its last set of wheels. Brand-new wheels, I should add, somewhat acidly. Okay, brand-new tires anyway, which approximately quadrupled the value of the entire vehicle, which is to say, nothing times 4 is still nothing. Sigh.

I did test drive a lot of little '4-bangers' because, living 30 miles from work, I want something a little more fuel-efficient than Lil' Rusty. There was a cute little red ’99 Pontiac Sunfire that I really liked, however the guy would not take less than $3K for it, which I just could not do. And apparently I can no longer have a major purchase be red, blue or purple. The last 10 years of vehicles have been, in order - white, black, white, gray/white, gray, white and now white. My horse trailer is gray. My house trailer is gray and white. Anything else would upset my feng shui.

I've been kind of snowed by a couple of sales folks lately, for example I looked at a ’97....er, maybe it was a Cavalier or Corolla or something, a decent deal at $2900, only 77K miles on it, nice and clean..... until I drove it and the transmission would KA-THUNK into gear every time. Good Ol' Boy Dealer tried to tell me it was because it was a small car and had a little engine. Right..... like the time I bought my '84 S10 Blazer - needed a new starter, no big deal, but the Good Ol' Boy dealer told me “It starts hard because it’s a truck, little lady.” UH-HUH. [See previous blog about discrimination.....!]

They all get real quiet when I actually (gasp!) open the hood and do simple things like pull out the dipstick to check the sludge, er, oil quality; test drive and apply brakes without hands on the wheel to see if it will stop straight; pull off a wheel to check the rotors; easy stuff that apparently most girls don’t know how to do.

GOB Dealer, meet the first child of my father, the best [posthumously] damn mechanic in the state of Michigan. Muhahahaha.