car repair

well i guess it was bound to happen. i haven't had an actual mechanical repair on one of my own cars in many years. i'm talking about something actually failing and needing to be replaced, rather than me just tearing into them for the sport of it. the rear brakes on the freestyle started squealing right about the time i got a service bulletin in the mail from ford about the rear brakes possibly squealing. what timing. so, i dropped the car off a 1/4 mile from the store. they didn't finish the car in time, so they gave me a rental. the ford taurus, in washing machine white.

this particular taurus was a 2007 courtesy car. this car could single handedly be responsible for the mess ford got themselves into. with only 9000 miles on the odometer, it felt like a 10 year old car. actually, it is, since the taurus only received minor updates over it's long life, so a '99 and a '07 are identically old. ford stopped making these turds for public consumption in 2004 or 2005 and produced them solely as rental cars thereafter. if i were producing cars, i wouldn't want anyone to think that this is the type of car i present to the world by flooding rental agencies with it. the engine, the horrible, head gasket-blowing 3.0 'vulcan' pushrod design, is abysmal. rough, loud, anemic...ug. it's hard to believe any automaker could make something so bad in 2007. i realize it was kept around years after it's shelf life had expired with minimal effort in it's development on purpose, but it didn't make me want to spend any more time in that '80's throwback.

but they are gone now. deanna's last car, the escape, and now her new car, the fusion, are light years ahead. getting back into the freestyle yesterday was like a night and day comparison. as much as i joke about my station wagon, it's a very good car. i'm glad things have improved so dramatically over the years at ford (taurus notwithstanding), otherwise i would be driving another brand, for sure.