FUCK YOU, CAR! FUCK YOU! >=(

I had a 1989 Pontiac Grand Am that I had transferred into my ownership after my mother was dumb enough to lose her driver's license. It served its purpose okay but toward the end of its life, it had developed some significant problems.

- The heater didn't work well so defrosting the car in winter was nigh impossible. I had to do a shitload of scraping. Some evenings, after exiting work, it was below 5 degrees Fahrenheit, so I had little option but to sit in the car for nearly thirty minutes until a small patch of window melted away, enough to see forward. I had to drive home with the side windows completely unrolled just so I could see behind.

- The water pump had a habit of breaking. I don't know why, since it was replaced twice (hay lurker~). I had two different garages inspect the lines and seals leading to and from the pump, thinking an indirect problem kept causing the malfunction, but nothing was ever found. But it was a damned annoyance. Without a working pump, the engine overheats and the steering column locks up. Try driving 5 mph to the garage, hoping you don't crack your engine block.

- The transmission was slippery. Actually, "slippery" is probably too kind. "Cerebral palsic" would be a better choice. While you were driving, you were okay. Anything above 25 mph was usually easygoing. But once the engine decelerated and the gearbox had to shift, the car would spasm and stall. My engine would die completely at random traffic lights. Usually I could wait a minute or two, restart and proceed with caution but occasionally the car would refuse to move again for nearly an hour. I learned to circumvent this issue by manually dropping into lower gears as I decelerated; switching into third or second usually kept the engine running. Eventually, though, this stopped working too. I'd stall out at every single red light.

I never did get the transmission issue fixed. Hell, I'm really just guessing that it was the transmission. The car never made it to the garage for me to find out. I was attempting to drive five blocks to pick up dry-cleaning when the water pump blew again. The car overheated, the steering locked up, the transmission threw a fit and the camel's back was broken. I wasn't even going to spend the money to fix the damned thing. I called a scrapyard, took my $50 and called it even.


I also had a 1994 Dodge Shadow. I assumed ownership when my mom died. She bought it from some shady dealership (they were later shut down by the Feds) and it had a ton of minor problems.

- The trunk latch would randomly come undone. This would cause my trunk to happily bounce behind me as I drove, blocking my rear view at times. I tried to fix it but couldn't quite determine why it was loosening itself in the first place. I eventually stretched a bungee cord from the base to the rear window. That worked okay.

- The muffler was a piece of garbage. But who expects them to last forever, honestly? Anyhow, the noise this thing made was excruciating, and at the time, I had absolutely no spare money for auto repairs. I had to turn up the radio and pretend I was listening to the "Best of GWAR Hour" or something. Eventually, the muffler's coupling rusted off and the damned thing dragged along the ground behind me, emitting sparks and an increasingly obnoxious din of metal against asphalt. This continued for about three weeks until I finally had enough money to get it replaced.
When the mechanic raised the car on the rack, I could see the severed portion of exhaust pipe; it had been ground into a very oblique point, looking much like an oversized hypodermic needle. I was genuinely impressed. That day I learned that new mufflers don't cost nearly as much as my friend insisted.

- The windshield wiper tab had this sneaky habit of coming off and rolling beneath the seats where I had no hope of finding it for a few days. This made it very difficult to activate/deactivate my wipers. I felt like a total retard driving down the highway on a sunny afternoon with my wipers rocking in full swing. Likewise, I was rendered immobile by anything heavier than a moderate sprinkle. I eventually solved the problem by jamming an eyeglass screwdriver in the slit, finding the notch and using that as my control switch.

- The gas line began to leak. At first, the trail was hard to determine. Any passing vehicle could've left some drops of gas. And it wouldn't leak when the car was off. But once the drips became a steadier dotted line, and a small pool amassed when I left the car in idle, I knew.
I took the car to the garage and asked for a repair. Two hours later, they called me and said it'd be kinda silly since they could never make the fix permanent, and repeated solderings would cost more than the car's overall value. They urged me to just go find a better vehicle.
Hurricane Katrina had swept through Louisiana a few months before, so the gas crunch has begun. I took the mechanic's advice and traded the Shadow in toward my current car.


I now drive a 2004 Suzuki Verona. It's been pretty good so far, save for one event.

- This past winter was rather harsh. The driveway where I used to park has a way of becoming very icy. Sometimes I would get snowed in or stuck along ice patches. One day, I couldn't build enough momentum or contact to move beyond an unusually large section of ice. I'd salted and sanded it over but was still stuck. I spent about thirty minutes rocking in and out of reverse, attempting to maneuver over the hump. I finally cleared the patch but heard an odd clunk in the process. As I drove along to work, I noticed that I had almost no momentum; depressing the accelerator did absolutely nothing. The transmission was completely shot.

Fortunately, it was fully covered by the warranty. Still, there was no way that should've blown out after only 4 years with less than 30,000 miles on the vehicle. I was quite upset about that.

Right now, I think the left CV joint is having an issue. I hear rhythmic squeaks/scraping noises when I move forward, and their oscillation increases with my speed. I can hear them coming from the wheel-well area but haven't isolated the cause. "CV Joint" is just my own guess. Sometimes this noise disappears completely. Then it randomly returns another day. I had it looked at once before but nothing was found. I'm kind of stumped.

Jam it back in, in the dark.