Out With the Old, In With the New

Well, new to us anyways. Last week there was a tragedy in our little family. Red Thunder (my 99 Pontiac Grand Am) passed away. While on my way to a party last week all of a sudden the engine started rocking. Thinking it could perhaps be a similar problem that just occurred in Jakob's Lumina I gave him a call. He was frustrated as most people are when cars have problems, not to mention we had just repaired his car. He went and did some research and looked under the hood. He claimed that the rocking engine was simply from the air conditioning and I would just have to hold out for the rest of the summer until things cooled down. Not ideal but hey, it's cheaper than taking it to the shop to be fixed. We then drove it to church the next day just to ensure his diagnosis was correct. It wasn't. There was smoke billowing out from the exhaust pipe amongst other various symptoms that didn't seem to be connected. We decided it needed to go into the shop.

Jakob was driving it Tuesday morning on the way to the shop. The smoke was bad and not 2 miles onto the free way he ends up pulling over. The car had over heated, no big deal I thought, it over heats all of the time... nope this was BAD. Striking the plan to go to our mechanic on the other side of the city we moved slowly to a mechanic much closer. Block by block we waited for the engine to cool down. We knew she was a goner but we had a diagnostic done anyways. The mechanic didn't even give us a quote that's how bad it was and it looked like it wasn't simply one problem.

So the hunt began! I've never had to look for a car before and this was overwhelming. I searched for a week with nothing we were too excited about. Made a few calls on ones we were interested in but they had already been sold. Either the miles were too high, or the price was too high. Any perfect matches were long gone. I didn't feel good in my heart about any of them, not it mention it was difficult to discuss when Jakob didn't get home until later in the evening. One night after reviewing my list he jumped on Craigslist himself. The first car he clicked on was it, that was the one. It was a relief but frustrating that after a week of hunting, the first car he clicked on ended up being the car that we bought. Ugh! Men!

It is a 2001 Dodge Stratus and let's just say my heart is happy. For some unknown reason I've always had a issue with Dodges, and it's not based on any facts or knowledge I just simply didn't like them. All that has changed. I think I'm a convert. It drives very similarly to my Grand Am which is a plus. It's four doors (a necessity with a baby on the way), has brand new tires and has power everything. The only disadvantage would be the power locks. On my Grand Am there was a 10 second delay before the doors would lock, on this one it's instant. Let's just say I had an extra set of keys made. Over all I am very happy and even better Jakob is happy. It is such a relief to have two cars again!