For most of my adult life, I drove around in old cars, most purchased in good running condition for little money. I drove them until I sensed they were about to need an expensive repair and then sold them and bought another one that someone had spent a lot of money repairing. That worked for almost 50 years of my life.
Then, I had two cars crap out at about the same time. Two. One was toast, permanently. It was a 1999 GMC Jimmy, and what it needed would have cost more than the thing was worth, and was an unpredictable failure. I sold it to a junkyard for $500, where it will be dismantled to keep other 1999 GMC Jimmies and the equivalent Chevy mid-sized SUVs on the road.
The other car was a 1991 Volvo 740 wagon. Nice car. I had just replace the catalytic converter and done some other work. Then, it stalled in traffic one day. AAA towed it back to my house. Right then, we had just that one car. I applied my considerable diagnostic skills to the problem and got it running again, with a couple of ignition parts. Two weeks later, it died again in traffic. I fixed it again, with another ignition part, but started worrying. When it stalled the third time, I realized that this was going to be a problem. It was no longer dependable. I fixed it again, but this time, I wasn't feeling secure about the fix. With 186,000 miles on it, the problem looked like it might actually require replacing the car's primitive computer, and that wasn't in the cards. No new ones were available, and the used ones were from cars as old as mine and with as many miles. I spent a couple of hours on the internet, reading about this issue and decided that it was time to retire the thing.
What to do? My wife decided. No more old clunkers. We decided to go with just one car for a while, but it had to be dead reliable. So, we dropped into a dealer, after some serious research, and bought a brand new car. A cheap new car. A car with a great warranty, and brand new. The payment wasn't that high since it was a cheap car, but it had a freaking warranty and zero miles. My first new car in my entire life. Almost three years later now, and it was still a good choice. Her mom just quit driving, so there's also a 2007 PT Cruiser in the driveway now, with under 40,000 miles, but our new car is still like new, with only 18,000 miles in almost three years. We're set for a few years, now.
I'm done with driving old cars. I'm 69 years old, now, and I hate crawling under cars. I won't do it again. I've given up driving old cars with six figure miles on them. Done. I won't do that ever again. It's too expensive.
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