A better vehicle.....

My daughter finally found a vehicle that she absolutely loves and tonight it became part of her family. This picture is not the actual vehicle but its the same make, body style and year.....Dodge Durango, 4x4. Hers is dark blue. We ran a "Carfax" report on it and its been a leased vehicle all of its life with the only accident being a broken fog light. As far as leased...... I think that may be a good thing because people seem to be a bit more careful about maintaining a leased vehicle as they don't want to be 'fined' at the end of their lease. It does seem to be in very good condition, inside and out. My daughter's friend looked it all over and since he's a mechanic, he hopefully can give an opinion with some expertise behind it. The first vehicle she found had unusual circumstances surrounding it. She liked that one too but never did get to test drive it. She found the Durango and promptly forgot about the other one.

The other vehicle is an Explorer. The guy said his wife won it and she's been the only driver. Its a one-owner vehicle, which is a good thing but I think this guy was being less than honest with us about several things and that made us nervous. When we ran the carfax report on that one it showed that on 2 seperate occasions the registration expired and one time it sat for a year without supposedly being driven and the second time it was nearly 3 years before the registration was renewed. It had extremely high mileage on it and when you factor in that it "supposedly" sat for over 3 years, it makes the use more than triple that of an average driver. It also has one recall that's never been taken care of.....since 2004!! You know what they say....you take better care of something if you have to pay for it. I sort of think that the vehicle was not really maintained like it should have been. The guy let it slip that he had paid out over $500 to have it detailed to get ready to sell it. Wow....this vehicle must have been pretty dirty at one time! My daughter's friend was more worried about the horribly uneven tread wear on the front tires...he suspected a major repair looming in the near future. The owner also has had it up for sale for 3 weeks and has come down $1,000 on his original asking price. So....even though it was the first vehicle to catch her eye, I'm glad she didn't get it and went with the Durango instead.

So tonight it sits all comfy inside her garage in its new home. I feel so much better knowing that she has a better vehicle to drive.....although I cannot fault her old car. That poor car has been through the mill and it still bravely took her where she needed to go. My long-time readers will remember when vandals took baseball bats at it, breaking the windows, the dashboard inside, the hood and front grill work....along with slashing 2 tires. She only had PLPD insurance on it so she had to drive it looking like that (after getting the windows replaced). We found out much later that the vandals thought it was someone else's car.....someone they had a vendetta against and so they did all this damage. She had left it in a Pizza place parking lot because the battery had gone dead....that place is only a couple blocks from where I live and she thought it would be safe for the night, until she could get another battery in it. She learned a valuable lesson....she says she will never again leave her vehicle anywhere for the night.

So, I'm headed for my warm comfy bed. Its 9 degrees outside with a wind chill of 8 below zero. We do have some snow on the ground but nothing as bad as Iowa....(I sent the rescue dogs with a keg of beer, Jamie!). My Christmas shopping is done since I did it online. I have half of it here....the other half is in transit. HO HO HO All of you contending with this cold....stay warm and those of you who are already warm.....all I can say is...."You lucky stiffs!"