My parents were visiting this weekend and they asked if we could make a trip to Kamloops to visit my brother. We crammed into our “good car” (which now has a big crack across the windshield, a partially broken mirror from cows rubbing on it and a hole in the EV cannister courtesy of the driveway).
Inevitably we started discussing our last proper trip to Kamloops. We must be getting old because we couldn’t remember. We know we’ve stayed at my brother’s place with the baby but can’t remember the specific occasion. What I do remember is a trip to Kamloops to buy the other car, which really is a “beauty.” We were near broke at the time with the money from our house in Ottawa tied up due to flooding the day before closing. It’s always a good sign when buying a car, if your wife asks the person selling it if the car will make it back home.
We did make it back, fortunately. At over 300,000 km, it had been high-centred before, resulting in the EV cannister being gone altogether, the fuel tank and guard having taken a big hit and some loose wires. As an added bonus, the boots were broken in addition to a number of other problems (did I mention it is a “beauty?”).
Were there better cars on the market? Definitely. Were there better cars available for the same money? Almost certainly. Was there any chance my wife was going to go for a different vehicle? Definitely not.
She had had the exact same car before and it also needed a wealth of farmer fixes (there were definitely some pieces welded on). To be fair to her, it never died despite, having gone across country multiple time, having to deal with a fair bit of abuse including my wife loading it down so heavy at one point that the wheel wells wore through the tires.
Rather she lost it when someone rear-ended her.
Most recently, her car started to make a truly awful noise. We took it to the mechanic. There was some deliberation and the next day we were able to pick it up again, no problem.
All I can say is, it’s truly mind-boggling how many expensive parts can be missing or bypassed on a car.