Yay!

My Monday was fine. It was the Tuesday, where my Sable's radiator burst, leading to me having to make a repair almost as expensive as the car was which was further delayed by a part having to be ordered from Milwaukee so I still have no vehicle and likely will not until tomorrow that sucked ass. Oh, and a large payment that I agreed to make in end of June was somehow taken from my account in early June, so I have no actual money until tomorrowish when I should be getting a check in the mail for some work.

But Jeeps are good, my wife's car (which was my car until she started commuting a long distance) is a Jeep Patriot.

Yeah, I missed my '05 Grand Cherokee I totalled a couple of years back. We got a great deal on this one. 42K miles for $17K. Put $4000 down and financed the other $13K plus tax and title. We have another not insignificant chunk coming in next month sometime and are talking about buying a slightly older Wrangler and the new Jeep Offroad Camper for weekend fun.

@SD - been there, done that, brought home the T-shirt and feel your pain. The reason for the "new" 2008 instead of holding out for the entire inheritance and buying a brand new one was that the Friday before Memorial Day, the Explorer's front drive of the four wheel drive gave it up and started grinding like a coffee grinder. I was afraid of breaking down over the holiday weekend, so I went and rented a car for a week and a half. We actually put $7000 down, but $3000 went to paying off the Explorer as, with what we owed and what they'd have to put into repairs, we were upside down that much.

IMHO, it's never worth buying a new car. Even getting the last year's model will save you a few thousand right off the top. Not to mention, insurance will cost less. New cars are one of the biggest wastes of money in this world.

Yeah, abg, any time I've bought a "new" car it's been the previous model year on clearance, which is much more affordable. And wow, Draug, that's always rough...drivetrain repairs...shiver.

Absolutely. My preference is what we did, 2 to 3 years old off lease or something, but it's the wife's inheritance so she had some say in it. But the "brand new" we were looking at doesn't come used right now. We were considering a Honda CR-Z sport hybrid. We looked at an '04 Liberty for $9K that we could have paid cash for and paid off the Explorer (letting it sit and repairing it later to sell on our own), but it had just over 100K miles and the cheaper rims (it was the low-end Sport) and the rims were starting to flake and rust so, I thought, if the previous owner didn't take care of the exterior any better, what would make me think he took care of the mechanicals... This one has nice gunmetal and polished two-tone alloys that set the car apart from so many other Liberties, a *very* clean interior, only a small rock chip in one front fender (clearly a rock chip) and under the hood is incredibly clean.

Yeah, we owed $4800. The repairs were estimated at $2500 and the beast blue booked at $3300 assuming it was fixed, so we had to cover the difference between $4800 and the $800 they gave us.

The Explorer was my fourth Ford/Mercury and my third bad experience with them. Only my old Cougar XR-7 was any good. Never going back again. It's Mopar or GM for me if it's American, and Honda or Hyundai if it's affordable foreign (not discounting BMW, Porsche, Saab, Mercedes, Volvo, Ferrari, Lotus, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, etc. who are hardly in my price range even late model).

Did you consider donating it? You can kind of finagle the "price" (up to blue book) that they'll give you to list on your tax return.

I've actually had good luck with Fords, until this Sable. I've had a 1978 Mercury Zephyr, a 1986 Escort, a 2001 Focus, and this.

@Draug

You'll never have to worry about going back to Mercury, as they've been discontinued : (

I've actually been happy with all my Mercurys. Not sure where I'll go next.

There are issues with donating a car that doesn't have a clear title and, by using it in the trade, we were able to finagle the downpayment as looking like $5500 to the bank (up the Liberty's price and reflect an better trade on the Explorer so it didn't reflect the required repairs) thereby getting us a better interest rate. The Liberty had the room in it's price to do that.

Oh, and we still have 13K to invest in retirement, put into "pimping" the Liberty (just adding nerf bars, a front grill guard, and stone guards on all the lights) and have some fun with (a cruise or all-inclusive resort vacation later this summer).

Umm...why don't you have a clear title for your car? : )

@SD - I had am 87 Escort bought when the 88s came out. I complain, but shouldn't. It was good for what it was, small reliable transportation. But my Mustang LX, and this Explorer were junk. Oh, and I don't count my '75 LTD I bought for $150 in 1991 in the mix. It was transportation that, combined with a '72 Plymouth Satellite, I could keep cobbled together and running and always have a car to get me to work. I spent $200 total on the two of them and got $500 on them when I traded them in on the Mustang. That was a mistake. I had the Mustang less than a month before it threw a rod and the dealer said "Well don't go above 55". I said the hell with that and made him take it back. I ended up with an 82 280zx. A little TLC and it was a good little sports car. I really learned to work on cars with it, doing everything from replacing the water pump and power steering pump to pulling the fuel injection system to replace a couple of leaky injectors. But it was the car that got me hooked on sports cars. For a 2.8 liter inline 6 and being 9 years old, it screamed and handled amazingly well. It wasn't my Vette I would have later, but it topped the XR-7 in handling and the Fiat Spider in muscle, giving me the best of both I had experienced at that point.

Because I still owed on it, remember? We're talking about the Explorer which I still owed $4800 on.

@Draug

Gotcha. We're talking about a lot of cars at the same time : )

I paid $250 for my 1986 Escort, and got a grand off it 5 years of pizza delivery later. That was my equivalent to your Satellite and LTD. I sold it to buy a Honda CR-X which...threw a rod and became useless. We have weirdly similar car histories.

Car history is a good topic...perhaps a new thread?