Local Industry Gone
A friend took advantage of the “Clunkers” program and bought a new truck, the first new truck he ever owned.
The local auto repair sector is in mourning. The “Clunker” he traded in was the equivalent of a separate industry. Boats have been purchased, children have gone through college, weddings have been funded with the money for repairing it. It had around 68,000 total miles on it, and he bought it used.
Three sets of tires, three radiators, two air conditioning compressors, 5 batteries, two alternators, a new fan belt every six months, freeze plugs, head gaskets, etc. It had 20 gallons of gas in the auxiliary tank that had been inaccessible for months, and the gas gauge on the accessible tank didn’t work. Wiper blades would just fall off when you used them. The passenger side mirror came off when I closed the door one day because the screws were too small for the clips in the door and the double-sided tape used to hold it place when the mirror was installed, finally gave out.
“Lemon” doesn’t begin to describe that truck, and yet, every time you suggested that he get rid of it, he would say, “this time they found the real problem”.
When he said that they couldn’t take it apart and sell parts, I breathed a sigh of relief. I don’t doubt it will break the crusher when they go to “cube” it.
4 comments
i’ve had cars like that, except that i could never afford to have someone else work on them.
my present ‘clunker’ is well known at the garage where i take it, since it’s 20+ years old and parts inevitably need repairing or replacing on a car that old, but overall, it’s turned out to be the most un-lemony car i’ve ever owned.
almost a quarter million miles and maybe $500-600/year total for both the bigger repairs and the usual maintenance, and someday it’s probably going to need a new transmission…
of course, the bigger repairs all seem to happen just when curmudgeon cat racks up a huge new mound of vet bills, but that’s hardly the car’s fault [i think 🙂 ].
.-= last blog ..Health care town hall meetings, August 2009 =-.
I should never have gotten rid of my ’87 Toyota truck. I get annoyed every time I see it. Tires, batteries, and oil changes are all that thing has ever needed and it still gets 30mpg. My neighbor drives it to work every day.
That F-150 wasn’t all that old, it was just a lemon from the get-go. It was probably a Tuesday morning truck after a 3-day weekend.
…I have to confess to a few things: A) I have four automobiles; B) three of them are paid for and were manufactured in the previous century; and C) the “cash for clunkers” program doesn’t touch any of them. Because of the limitations of the program, I find myself ambivalent about the whole thing, mostly for self serving reasons…
Two of the vehicles qualify for the CARS program based on gas mileage, but both of them are worth at least as much as the $4500 allowance. The other paid-for vehicle has 180,000 miles on the odometer but has an EPA mileage rating of 26 mpg (city/highway) . There is nowhere for me to go in the “cash for clunkers” program, so it is pretty easy to step totally aside from all the fights and mudslinging, because it personally doesn’t matter. On that proverbial other hand, all the right-wing chitter about “pent-up demand” and “picking winners and losers” rings pretty hollow after the previous eight nightmarish years of Republican ‘leadership’…
The trade-in was an 8 cylinder and the new truck is a 6 with much better mileage. There was really no reason for him to have an 8, other than that’s what the local dealers were ordering. He had to wait to get the new truck because it had the small engine and a standard cab with an 8-foot box. The dealers in the area weren’t ordering anything except fully loaded trucks with reduced beds, the kind of vehicles you sell to people who don’t really need a truck.
I would have preferred to see something about pollution in addition to just mileage rating and made it a matter of mileage difference, not just mpg. If you traded in the 26 mpg for something that got 30mpg, that should qualify. Every reduction helps.
He actually got $8500 off list, because of another $4k of incentives from GM and the dealer, but he also paid cash for the truck, mostly because the interest on money market accounts suck, as in .6% APR > $10K.