When Life Gives You Lemons...

...they still taste f$&#'ing sour!~

I think this will be my first real negative post. But life is real and negative things happen. We have had a string of bad luck with vehicles. Lets go back 3.5 years ago when we treated ourselves to our first ever "real" and new car. A beautiful black 2006 Dodge Durango with a big ole V8 Hemi engine. Right after Sydney was born we upgraded from a reliable crappy old Nissan Pathfinder that we bought for next to nothing. 5000 miles and a few months later that new, fancy and expensive Durango became a sour lemon. At least 5 trips to the shop for the same issue that couldn't be fixed. We lucked out when Chrysler/Dodge very willingly handed us a brand new fancy 2008 Durange with the same wonderful features at no additional cost. Just a transfer of title. So we landed a two year (in age) newer car without the added cost of the sticker price difference. Huge deal! Great deal for us. We are still so thankful that we didn't have to go through the process of the "lemon law."

Ok, crisis averted right? Nope, a year and a half ago we purchased a used Mazda Tribute with few miles relative to its old age. We paid $9000 for what we thought was going to be a fantastic car that would get me to and from work more safely in the horrible weather. My little tiny Mazda Protege was dying and needed too much work done to justify keeping it. Although now, we wonder if that little crap car would still be running if we had just decided to risk putting money into it. We would have been so much better off.

Not even a year later and the Tribute started to give us some serious issues. Jim got stranded on a Pennyslvania highway in the dark around the holidays. I was going to have to drive 1.5 hours from my parents' house to go find him. After that issue, we put over $2300 into fixes on the car over the past several months. The other day Jim called me on his way home from work to tell me that he was taking the truck directly to the garage because it was breaking down again. We got the horrible news that the Tribute needed a new engine - total cost for the process would be $6000. Even a rebuilt engine would be close to $4000. Not to mention that it needs a new exhaust system and another expensive fix (I can't remember). So, to get the Tribute back on the road would be close to $8000. We can't put that kind of money into a car that has proved to be such a lemon. We still owe money on this car. I want to cry every time I think about it.

So after realizing that we didn't want to buy another used car (they are so expensive now and with our bad bad luck), we decided to look into Honda. We thought we would be buying ourselves a Civic this afternoon, but then realized, as we sat there looking at the vehicles, in the long run, a Civic just wasn't going to work for us. After a short discussion, we stepped up to the mid level CRV (nice alloy wheels, sun roof, nice interior, power everything). A car that we hope will be reliable...come on, it is a Honda and please, we need a reliable car! So we plan to run this brand new CRV to the ground... 10 years baby! Please, give us 10 good years. I don't care if you look like shit after 10 years...we just need you to last!!

We are paying the Durango off tomorrow (goodbye basement playroom project money) and starting a new car payment next month. We are so sad. We planned to be car payment free for several years to save up for another car - that we had hoped to pay mostly cash for. It was a good plan. But plans get broken sometimes. In a few years when the Durango gets a little old and more sluggish, the CRV will become the family car and Jim will run the Durango until it dies.

So we have a great Durango that has many many years of life yet. The girls and I have a safe vehicle to travel in. Now we have a pretty little CRV that we hope will be a good car for us.

It should have been a happy day today when buying a car, but we can't help but feel very bitter for the $6000 (not to mention the wasted $2300 on fixes) that we now have to throw away on a car that is going to the junk yard. We don't have that kind of money to waste.

After I met Jim at the Honda dealer to finalize our plans, he stayed back to finish the paperwork and the girls and I took the Durango to our trusty garage. We have two tires that have screws in them and the one tire was leaking. We needed an oil change too. So my little ladies had to sit at the Honda dealer for over an hour and then we spent another two hours at the garage. The wonderful lady at the garage came out to the waiting room and sheepishly told me that the Durango was going to need rear brakes ASAP. Great. Ok. I told her no more bad news. We can't handle the pain. She and all of the garage have been amazing to work with during the whole Tribute disaster. They were going to loan us a car (for free) until we made a decision but since we decided right away, they very kindly offered to tow the defunked Tribute to the Honda dealer. We have one less burden to think about.

Anyway, after such a negative post, here are some lovely pictures of the cute little CRV. Please keep your fingers crossed that the paid off Durango and the new CRV will last us many years. We really wanted to be car payment free.