The Life of a Contour

What’s the difference between a guy who lies to you about a $2600 car and a car dealership who wants to charge $3000 to fix it?

To start off with, my first car was a 1993 Mercury Cougar that I purchased from a neighbor. The only thing that was wrong with it was that it had been slightly damaged by the owner. He had a DUI had hit a light pole. On a side note, I think one of the coolest things is the cars that have a breathalyzer test built-in. So for the car to start you have to breath into this device, then if you pass, the car will start. Else wise, you will not be able to start the car. Well, the Cougar was a pretty good car. One day I was working at Mike’s Car Wash and one of the guys had taken my car out to get some dinner for us. We would go out and get dinner then bring it back for everyone. Well the guy that I let drive it had gotten a ticket for going 123 miles per hour down Washington Street. This was way after he drove my car though. He had a 1992 or ’93 Chrysler Labaron which had the Turbo engine. I admit that it was a pretty fast car. He always talked about him racing other cars on the highway and him drifting a front-wheel drive car which is actually pretty hard. Well, when he got back from getting food, he said that my car drifted nicely. It had been a rainy day so I didn’t thinking it would be to hard but why was he drifting in someone else’s car. At the end of the shift, I went to my car and started it, put it into drive, and drove off. I tried to stop at the stoplight but couldn’t because I had no breaks. So, I had to slowly apply the parking brake to make the car stop. This wasn’t a shock to me because my godfather’s car had busted fuel lines once so it had happened before but my car didn’t have just busted fuel lines. It needed a new master cylinder and everything else that are required for brakes. I was so frustrated because this guy had cost me over $500. I asked him about it and he denied drifting, he said he was joking around. It worked perfectly when got to work but suddenly didn’t when I left work.

Besides that, it was a pretty good car because it was a tank almost. So for a first car, it wasn’t the worst experience as the car I purchased after that. I am not a big fan of Ford cars because they tend to break a lot. I know the acronym of Ford spelled backwards, “Drivers Return on Foot” or “Fixed or Returned Daily.” Well, I had used my Cougar to travel to work pretty much every day and one of my jobs was 15 miles away from my house. So I put a lot of wear on the car. Over about a year use of the car, the drivers’ side door was starting to sag. Like I said earlier, the car was like a tank so everything in the car was heavy. My godfather and I were pretty creative when it comes to fixing things for pretty cheap. You will see a pretty good example as you read more. We couldn’t find anything as a cheap fix because the door was not built like most doors were. Its hinges were built differently and couldn’t be replaced unless you spend $300 per door. The car was so old that it would be a dumb idea in my opinion to get it fixed. So to close the door from the outside you had to hold the bottom panel of the door and having to push up. I had to put a bolt that added more tension to it so that when I pushed up on it, it would tear off the entire door panel. This worked for maybe a week then I decided to sell it. I listed it on Craigslist and it was sold within 2 weeks which made me very happy.

I then started looking for a different car. I wanted one that was newer and had better features like gas mileage and four doors. I found a 1999 Ford Contour that was listed for $2600. I knew that I would have to come up with $1100 myself because I only got $1500 from selling the Cougar which was a really good deal for me since I only paid $1000 for it but I had put a lot of electronics and sound system in it. I love to customize my cars but putting in lights, sound systems, alarms, remote starters, lighted windshield washer fluid sprayers, and whatever else I can find that would look cool. Anyways, I had looked at a lot of cars on Craigslist but I saw the Contour and liked it because it had a great paint job, it got 29 miles per gallon according to Kelly Blue Book, and it had a very nice CD player. I decided to call the guy in which he was really weird sounding so I was suspicious but I was desperate for a car so my godfather and I decided to meet the guy on the Westside of Indianapolis. We meet at a Marsh where we saw the car with the guy driving it. We meet him and he seemed very weird and like on the tips of his toes. I took the car on a test drive and it drove very nicely and the brakes word very well, so we went ahead and purchased it from him. So the guy who sold us the car drove it to the BMV so we could get it plated so we could drive it home. He didn’t really want to do it, but we weren’t going to buy the car unless he did it. We wouldn’t be allowed to drive it on the plates that were already there because they weren’t ours. Well, we got the licensing process all taken care of then we went home. Since my godfather had been driving for many years and had a lot of experience with them, he drove the car home just to check to see if there was anything wrong with it. When we got home he said that it drove very nicely and that it seemed as if it were a very nice car.

So I the next day I was so happy that I had a new car so I took it to work. We had a Christmas party so we stayed till about midnight. Well, it was snowing and sleeting and I couldn’t get my car to start. I thought that it was the battery at first but it wasn’t. So my godfather had to come get me at midnight which was not very fun for him. Somehow, he got the car started and drove it home while I trailed behind him because I didn’t want something to happen and he be stranded and the roads were very dangerous. So we made it home safely and we slept until 7am the next day and we took it to a different mechanic that was pretty close to our house because our normal mechanic was overloaded with customers. We dropped it off so and they had it to us by the end of the day when they called us back and said it was ready to be picked up and that it would cost around $680 or so. After we picked up the car and drove it home, we thought that it was good to go after just a thermostat fix. Well, it wasn’t because the very next day it wouldn’t start. We took it back to them because it was under warranty and they had like a six month guarantee on their work. I like it when the people who are working on your car call you to let you know the status of your car and you don’t have to call them to get information. They put a lot of new parts in the car while trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Time flew by for what seemed liked weeks without having a car; actually it was 3.5 weeks until they knew exactly what was wrong with it. They said that it had been the head gasket needed replacing and that it would cost around $3200 or so to fix it and that if I wanted a new engine it was going to be around $4300 or so. Well, to have the head gasket fixed was almost like repaying for the car again. That was too much so we called our other mechanic and he said that he had time to look at it. While this had happened I regretted not taking it to him and having him do an inspection for $70. That would have saved so much money and stress on my behalf. The mechanics that we normally go to looked at the car and gave about the same estimate as the mechanics who took weeks to figure out the problem. With them, you don’t pay unless he does actual work. When we went and saw the car, he had the engine torn apart and it looked like a pile of junk. We told him not to fix it or anything and that we would probably just find a new car. Once the car got started, it ran fine. It just took about 10 minutes to get it running at times.

I called every junk yard in Indianapolis asking how much they would give me for the car and everyone said around $200 or so. I was going to do this so I wouldn’t be “skunked” over the transaction. My godfather told me not to sell it just yet because he had a plan in mind that might be a temporary fix. The next day after his fix, I went to start the car and to my amusement, it actually started. This was a total shock because I have never gotten it to start right off the bat. He is always very good at getting things to work because he was in college for 7 years and was very intelligent at electronics and life advice. Well, about 6 months of my car working perfectly, dooms day for my car had come when we were in South Bend, Indiana. My fiancé had a foreign exchange student who was going on vacation with his parents before returning to Holland after being in the United States for a year. Her parents took him to the airport which is about 50 miles away from her house. I was upstairs then I went downstairs to get a blanket or something and I saw my cell phone blinking because I was getting a call. It was my fiancés father so I answered it and he said that he needed me to do a big favor for them. His foreign exchange student had forgotten a bad of luggage and he needed me to bring it to them. So I got into my car and drove to the airport. I was about a block away from the airport and my car died. I got panicked so I turned the key again and got it running. I knew that I was very short on time before their train was departing so I rushed to where they were. I got to the airport and parked my car and ran to the train where they were departing. I got back into my car thinking what could be wrong with it. To my amazement, it wouldn’t start. I knew what the original problem had been so my fiancés parents took me to AutoZone where we purchased a liquid fix like my godfather had put into my car. We went too returned to the airport where my car was and put the liquid in it praying it would work. It needed time for it to start working so we went to breakfast at Crackle Barrel then returned once again. My car still didn’t start so my fiancés father went to the booth where you pay your dues for parking in the lot. They called a tow-truck to come get my car and they took it to their shop. They people at the booth said that they were a pretty cheap shop and did very good work.

They took it to the shop and we followed behind then. When we got to the shop they took my information and told me that they would get back to me with a quote and tell me when to pick it up. I got a call the very next day saying that the head gasket was fixed and it was going to be around $1500 to fix. This was most definitely the cheapest deal that I had seen from anyone so I told them to go ahead and do it. They had to send the head to a machine shop to get it sawed down to make it fit properly because it was so warped. So after about a week I got another call from them asking if I wanted to pay an additional $700 to get new parts so they wouldn’t have to put the old ones back on. Like they took off the timing chain and a bunch of old things and it would have been pointless to put old things on a new engine. So we decided to go ahead and get it all fixed it. They said that it should last about 96,000 miles. I hope that that’s not the car I still have but to get my money out of it, it might not be that bad of an idea.

So I have been wondering why in this world is everything about making the “quick buck?” Why do you have to take advantage of someone else especially at their own expense? If he would have told me that it didn’t work, then of course I wouldn’t have purchased the car, but why didn’t he just get it fixed. Why did he have to tell me that there was something wrong with it from the start? He knew it was bad because when I called him about it he said it did have a lot of troubles starting it but never told me that. Why does society try to do whatever it takes to make the sell even if they know that what they are selling is wrong or doesn’t function properly? I see the commercials on the television where the dealer is trying to sell the car without a CarFax report but is trying to negotiate it so that he doesn’t have to face the truth about what’s really wrong with the car. That is not a fictional thing, it happens every day, and it is not a great experience especially when it comes out of your own pocket. I have learned from this experience that you shouldn’t just jump at the first thing that you see. You should always do your research and get things checked out. I wish that I would have paid the $70 to get the car looked at rather than paying double for the car.

Question: Why doesn’t society have enough respect to say to themselves,” what I am doing or about to do is wrong?” I am not going to sell them this without telling them what really wrong, and then having them decide if they still want to proceed.