Welp, the car is (belatedly) down at Chuck’s Auto Service, there to be refreshed for another year of survival.
Very nearly missed my chance: the ole Dog Chariot was supposed to arrive in his precincts at 8 a.m. But…a disadvantage of laying flat on your back day after day is that your computer is plugged into a bedroom outlet. After I let the dog out at dawn, I crawled back into the sack and started working on a client’s work.
The nose stayed on the grindstone till about 9 a.m., when I got hungry. Stumbled out to get the paper and was reminded of the leaking sprinkler head in front. Staggered back to the phone to call Gerardo and ask him to come fix it. He asked cuando? Looked at the calendar… Uh oh!
Called Chuck’s: Pete answered; said to bring it right down.
Flew toward the shop; turned around, flew back to the house to check to be sure I’d turned the fire off under the water kettle (whose contents I had imagined would be used to make coffee…); jumped back in the car; flew toward the shop.
Chuck drove me home and will bring the car back later today. This was good, in its way: it allowed him to get an earful of the squealing brakes. They just DID a brake job a few months ago.
Sort of. I think it was last in for an oil change in…uhm…January.
I’ve been putting off service because I thought I would buy a new car this summer. Then when all this medical sh!t fell on my head, shopping for a car was out of the question.
And now buying a new car this summer or any time in the near future is out of the question. All the money I’d planned to use to buy the car is going to the Mayo Clinic.
Driving homeward, I said to Chuck that I need for the thing to run at least another two or three years; possibly another five.
I’ve never owned a car this old! It is 14 years old. Still running like a top, though.
Well, that may not be true…the Mercedes may have been older. The number that sticks in my mind is 13 years; but it could have been longer. It also was running (expensively) well. The only reason we traded it in was the switch to unleaded gas. The thing ran on leaded, and we were told that unleaded would wreck the engine and we eventually would have to install a new one, which would cost as much as buying a new vehicle.
What a shame! It was SUCH a wonderful car, so beautiful…and holy MACKEREL the power that thing had! It was slow from a standing start, but at 65 mph all you had to do was breathe on the gas pedal and suddenly you’d be at 85. You have never seen such acceleration in a big old galumphing sedan with walnut and leather trim.
Heh. We traded it in on a Toyota and never looked back.
Whatever. This year there’ll be no RAM 1500 with four doors and a six-banger for me.
On the other hand, every year I can put off buying a new car makes it more likely that the next vehicle will be the last one I’ll ever have to buy. So that’s good. I’ve got cash to buy one more car, but not enough to spring for two.
Hm. Maybe the next car should be a Mercedes…
😉
whoa there! Wait. a. minnit.
For less than it would cost to get this:


I could get this:


Well, by golly. Every cloud has a silver lining, doesn’t it?
😆
We have been on the edge of replacing one of our cars for several years now. His is 15 years old and mine is a youthful 9. Husband can not make up his mind. For three or four years now he has said “this year I’m getting a new (er) truck.” But he doesn’t.
Which is fine with me as we adore traveling and don’t mind driving beaters so we can take a few more trips.
Really, when they still run well, what is the point of buying a new one?
aaahhhh! Fifteen…music to the frugalist ears!
Yeah, actually, the main reason I haven’t hurried right out to get a new car is that I secretly LOVE the old Dog Chariot. It’s comfortable and roomy and runs like a charm, it has a six-banger under the hood, its gas mileage ain’t great but it’s not THAT bad, and it cost $48 to register it this year. It’s a perfectly fine vehicle.
However, now that I’m feeling my mortality, really…I’d like to have a LITTLE bit of a life while there’s still a little time to get it. Like, maybe I’d like to travel around the country. I’ve never enjoyed flying, and the TSA has simply erased any desire I might have felt to get on an airplane. So that means travel = drive.
Wouldn’t drive the Chariot outside the city on a bet. So if I’m going to do things like drive to Santa Fe or even bucket around the state, I need a newer, more credibly reliable car. All I need is to be stuck on an Interstate out in the middle of the desert somewhere!
Totally agree with you on wanting “safety” underneath you when you travel. There is no enjoying a road trip with anxiety about your vehicle.
Is that a picture of your old Benz? Very similar body style to our Sunny. =) And the new ones definitely aren’t made as well as those old ones were. *sigh* nothing is, I suppose.
Very similar to it. It was an early 70s model…that’s a 1972, and I’m pretty darned sure that’s our model.
What a machine!
Okay, okay, we’re getting carried away here. REALITY CHECK!
In 1972, American cars were “unsafe at any speed,” and that was not an exaggeration. An American car that was still running at 50,000 miles was some sort of phenomenon. We called that phenomenon “junker,” as I recall.
In 1972, no one ever heard of an iPhone or an Android.
In 1972, phones were hard-wired into the wall and you couldn’t turn the damn things off unless you took the handset off the hook, which would cause the phone company to disconnect your service.
In 1972, one of my brightest young friends was told that yes, her performance at the bank was on the highest order, just freaking excellent, but no, she would not be promoted into the management training program to which she had applied three years running because there was a quota for the number of women who had to be accepted, the bank had filled its quota, and therefore she didn’t qualify.
In 1972 one of my friends, about 40ish, was refused admittance into Arizona State University’s Ph.D. program in English because, they said, she was “too old.”
In 1972 TV sets looked like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbZxc5i3BTo (what a hoot this guy is!)
In 1972, the mass-produced personal computer was a twinkle in some Xerox engineer’s eye.
In 1972, nobody ever heard of the Internet.
In 1972, refrigerators and washers looked like this: http://paintref.com/cgi-bin/brochuredisplay.cgi?year=1972&manuf=Appliance&page=1
Nope. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Thank goodness!
Great article ! This strikes a nerve on several fronts. First my faithful pick up is coming up on it’s 12th B-day. Was considering replacing it as it had a bad “miss” which several mechanics had said….”doesn’t sound good”. I’m kind of handy and replaced the wires and the coil-pac…runs like a new one…Sooo no new truck….$30 K for a new one? No thank you!! Fair to note this truck replaced the 20 year old Mazda pick up. Second my folks, in their late 70’s and early 80’s just made the same comment as you about cars. That they have never had such old vehicles….”what happened?” Add to this DF no longer drives due to his sight “challenges” and DM just was evaluated and because of her sight “challenges” now has a restricted license (no night driving). Sooo my thought is to repair their aging Caddy which has been a great car and will celebrate it’s 20th b-day next year. And therefore will be eligible for “historic tags”. Which means MUCH cheaper tags and insurance. The “ole girl” needs a tire repair….a new radiator and brake line replaced. My thought is this can all be done for under $200 in parts and free labor from DS. Now to convince them… A bit of advice…if and when you do replace the “dog chariot”…. The heck with a pick up…I’d go Mercedes again BUT this time a convertible for a couple reasons. First “when the top goes down…the price goes up”…convertibles hold their value. And a 6-8 year Benz should be picked up for a pretty reasonable price. And lastly few things are as wonderful as riding down the road with the top down. It makes running errands a treat. I know from experience …when car shopping about 8 years ago for DW…we came home with …a convertible…She’s been driving it for 8 years and has no intention of getting rid of it…In short she loves that damn car and has the top down at every opportunity…Something to think about….
Chuck and Pete said the car will probably need new rear brake drums soon: $400 or $500. And it needs new cooling hoses; the ones it has are original equipment. One is given pause when it comes to repairs that cost as much as the car is worth.
On the other hand, $500 or $1,000 is a far cry from what it would cost to buy a new vehicle.
Dunno how a convertible would do in 100-degree heat…or in a heavy-duty monsoon rainstorm, when water literally fire-houses out of the sky so hard you can’t see the end of the car’s hood. My son’s leaked, and the cost replacing or repairing it was out of the question.
One reason it leaked was that whenever he (or, on one occasion, his dad) left anything visible on a seat, the locals would take a switchblade to it. Once he borrowed his dear dad’s car, leaving the Toyota convertible with his dad while he drove up to Colorado to see the aged grandmother. After a visit to the Y, DD left his gym bag full of sweaty clothes in the car when he went to the office. Got back to find someone had slashed open the cloth top and stolen the dirty clothes.
My current Hyundai is 12 years old and I need to keep it running for at least another 2 years. So far, so good. My next car will most likely be a Hyundai, too. Best car I’ve ever owned.
My previous automobile was a 13-year-old Buick. What a dud! I only kept it for so long because I hated car payments and really wanted/needed to spend money on other things.
I know someone who has a ragtop Miata. She never locks it anymore so thieves won’t slash the top to get into the car. One of the reasons I’ll never own a convertible.
Holy Cow!!! Didn’t know crime is that rampant. I guess we are blessed or lucky. As we have not had the misfortune of having the top cut …yet. This top is pretty substantial though. Fair to note the car is “put to bed” every night in the garage. Just had some work done to it(another story) that required a bit of painting and the body shop guy was amazed at how the original paint matched right up. I explained it’s garage kept and he nodded and encouraged us to keep garaging it. And believe it or not…never a leak. Did some informal research a couple of years back and it’s amazing the values of cars that are hard tops versus rag tops. Without exception the rag tops held their value far better than the hard top. As for the repairs to the “chariot”…the cost for the needed repairs would probably be less than the “sales tax” on a new one…
Yeah, our cars are in garages, too. One thing that mystifies me is the habit of filling up the garage with junk and leaving a twenty- to thirty-thousand-dollar vehicle sitting out on the driveway or the street. So many people do that around here!
But when you go to a grocery store or the YMCA or some such, you have no choice but to park in an open lot or a metered street spot. There are some garages downtown, but they’re a) cramped and difficult to navigate and b) ludicrously expensive. Only the one-percenters could afford a public garage every day.
When you live in a meth capital, theft is part of daily life. LOL! I’m sure I told the story of my neighbor Roy, who realized, one morning after he’d turned on the ignition, that he’d forgotten his coffee. He left the key in the car while he trotted back in the house & grabbed his mug. In the time it took to pour the java and came back out — five minutes — the car was gone.
That’s very interesting about the rag top, though. What about a hard-top convertible like the Mazda MX-5? Don’t know how unwieldy that thing would be…but it’s snazzy-looking with the top up and a classic convertible with it down. Totally impractical and totally to die for!
Don’t know about the Mazda … but stand by my earlier statement “when the top goes down the price goes up”. A Dear Friend of mine bought a used Benz convertible at a great price when the owner fell on hard times. She took it to the mechanic to have it checked out before she bought it. Needed a couple small things and he told her if she took decent care of it she would not lose a dime on the car. As for me I’m just happy DW still loves her “rag top”. Just imagine the money I’ll save from not buying cars every 4 years if she decides to keep this thing 20 years.