My Cars: A History
When I was still learning how to drive I bought this 1994 Ford Escort. It was an ok car. It did have one large dent between the door and fender when I got it, which was great, because people would constantly ask me what I did. I don’t think I ever put a scratch on it.
I had it for a few years. I drove it out to Indiana once (and only once, because it made the trip and then broke a week after I got home. Once my jack-hole friends filled it with balloons (did I really not lock it when I was at work? I’m not sure how that played out exactly). I also drove around with all those balloons in my car until they all deflated or broke.
It needed repairing every now and then, and even got a new head gasket out of me. But when the head gasket broke for a second time I said never again and set out to buy a new car.
At an auction I bought a 2000 Dodge Neon. It had very little miles and was a great deal. All it needed when I bought it was a new tire (it had one spare on it).
It was a great car. I really loved it. But, alas. That all ended in the summer of 2007 (again, shortly after a second trip to Indiana, oddly enough) when some idiot making an illegal left turn crashed into it. Progressive declared it to be totaled.
Ouch. So, back at square one, I bought a 2002 Dodge Neon. I’m not really sure why, though I kinda got pressured into it a bit. This one had more miles than the first, but it wasn’t so bad in the beginning.
It got into a few scrapes here and there. I slid into a guard rail one winter, my dad scraped it with his van a few times (yeah, I know), some one backed into it once. She backed up with out looking, and I couldn’t get out of the way because someone was behind me… this actually happened shortly (days!) before I slid into that guard rail. It was great, because not only did her license plate leave an impression in my bumper, but when I was out of my car looking at it she yelled at me, “nothing’s wrong with your broke ass car” or something to that effect (and no, my car wasn’t at all broke looking at that point) and drove off! Unfortunately nothing ever came of that other than a permanent etching of half a license plate number.
Gross. But I actually paid off the loan on this car on January 21st. Which was pretty awesome. But it was having transmission problems since… October? I didn’t care to get these problems fixed because that was more money than I wanted to put into that car. I really didn’t like it and hadn’t liked it for years. And so on February 10th, as I tried to back out of my driveway, my car wouldn’t move. We tried to push it. That did nothing. It would still drive forward, but that was no help to anyway. I was an hour late to work that day. My dad eventually had to use my sister’s car to push it. My grandpa and I took it to a transmission place (his idea, to make sure it wasn’t just a cheapo fix) and they basically told us it was dead.
[the last time I drove my car, after it broke. note that the check engine light was on, and that it had been on for probably a year. note also that the gas tank was full, because I filled it on the way home from work, drove two miles from the gas station to my house, and that was all the day/night before it died.]
So I abandoned it at my work where it sat until February 18th, when I sold it to one of my second cousins. His plan is to basically flip it. I’m surprised he was even interested in it, since I had to be talked down from driving it to a junkyard on the Saturday before.
[I drove my dad's van, and thought I was going to die driving it]
[this is either my sister's Saturn or my grandma's. I have driven both since mine broke]
[this is my grandpa's "spare"/work van, which I am driving now. in the snow it also makes me fear for my life, as the brakes do not care to do their job when the road is slick.]
As of right now, I own no car. I’ve been driving miscellaneous cars for slightly over two weeks. I’m not really happy about it and I’m really not happy with the process of looking for a new car. I am looking to buy used, obviously, and spend about 10 grand or less on a five year loan. That’s a lot of money to “part” with. My main concern at first was low mileage, and when I talked to the people at the credit union they said that if I got a 2007 or newer I could get an interest rate of 4.6, and if it was 2006 or older the rate would be 7.something or other.
[this was the Focus I had as a rental. yes, there was a crazy hail storm when I had it and yes I had to pay a damn $250 deductible for the damage done]
Before today I was leaning towards a 2007 Ford Focus. It has a good record on Consumer Reports and I drove one once as a rental car and loved it. Today my uncle and I went out so I could test drive some cars. That was the first time I’ve ever done anything like that and I didn’t much care for it. But I looked up some cars at some dealers near his house and most of what I had written down was gone. I drove some sort of Chevy and hated it. Both dealers we went to had no Focuses (focusi?) so I didn’t even get to drive one of those. I did decide to drive a PT Cruiser (I didn’t want to be solely focused on the Focus, since I’ll have to have this car for at least five years) and surprisingly I really liked it. It was a 2006 though and that would put me in that higher interest bracket. I also don’t know what the insurance would be (I have a casual estimate for a Focus, and it is thankfully within my price range) and I’m not sure on the Consumer Reports.
It was not rated as highly as Focus specifically when it came to the category of “fuel” something or other. I read a ton of reviews today and a lot of them were bad, which isn’t helpful because a lot of Focus reviews were bad as well, even though the Consumer Reports is good. Every time I look up any car actually all I see is bad reviews. I feel like I’m swimming in them. It makes my head spin and makes me very afraid of buying any car. Maybe I need to test drive a Focus and see how that goes. I really liked that Cruiser though.
So here I am, no car to call my own and only a semi-cruddy minivan to drive around town in. It kinda sucks.
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