It's a New Car!

This is my new car. It's a 2010 Ford Fusion and it is awesome.

Well, it was awesome, for four whole days until I realized the transmission was wonky. Thankfully, it's still under warranty and in the shop right now getting a renewed transmission. They gave me a nice 2010 Ford Edge to use as a rental while it's getting repaired so that has been helpful. This was the absolute worst week possible for all of this to have transpired with me having to drive back and forth to Rolla four days in a row, but with the help of Grandpa Medley, we somehow made it all work. That man is a saint and if he wasn't here I don't know what the heck we would do as far as taking care of Grace and the farm.

I was pretty excited about getting this car. My work has provided a car for me and paid my work gas for the past 10 years. I had one year in there where I did the Public Relations job and did not have a CBCO car but otherwise, I've relied on them for a steady stream of reliable vehicles which is a pretty dang good perk for a not for profit!

I put on a LOT of miles each year doing my job. I have the largest physical territory and averaged 33,000 work miles the past two years. Then with another 4,500ish personal miles (I didn't drive it very much except for work) that's nearly 40,000 miles a year on a car. I put 800 miles on this week alone.

When work decided to change the policy so that we couldn't have any passengers in our work vehicles, I had to make a change. I can't NOT take Grace to school or pick her up from time to time and the idea of coming home to trade vehicles and drive the truck back and forth was crazy. Thankfully, the blood center is VERY generous with their car allowance so I took a couple of days to car shop and then asked Bryon to drive a couple that I was interested in. This one I found at Don Vance Ford in Marshfield.

Bryon had been sick as a dog on his two days off that week but went to town and test drove two of them and agreed if I wanted to buy one I could go ahead.

I was pretty excited because this is the first car I've ever gotten to buy all by myself. I did it all and they gave me the keys and a new car payment. They were so nice to me and didn't try to pressure me or talk me into a bunch of crap (think the old Reliable Toyota in Springfield when they used to take peoples keys and throw them up on the roof of the building when they test drove cars so they'd have to stay and listen to the spiel). None of that. They were awesome.

So I had four whole days to bask in the glory of the coolest car ever before I noticed the transmission was most certainly NOT right. We had owned two Ford Taurus' in the 90's and I think my Dad had one too. We had to replace transmissions in all of them so I knew what was going on pretty quickly.

I can't blame the dealership because I only test drove it an eight mile loop and they do too. I'd say that's why the previous owner traded it in. I figure it's just payback Karma from the time we traded in our Monte Carlo with a cracked block. What goes around comes around my friend. Karma can be a ... well you know.

So it sits at Don Vance gutted until Monday when I hope to get it back better than ever and still under warranty for 50,000 more miles.

This car has every available option on it except for a built in dvd player. It has navigation, bluetooth, a built in hard drive that holds 2500 tracks (I had been feeding it a steady diet of cd's over the few days I had it), a moonroof and so many cool feathers I've been in mourning this week.

A girl can get used to the nice stuff pretty fast.

I figure I'll drive it for three years and then trade it in for another car. It will have 160,000 + miles by then and as long as I can still get about $5,000 out of it I think I'll break even.

It's going to be hard to find a car nicer or cooler than this one.

And no Dad, Ford does not stand for Fixed Or Repaired Daily.

I hope.