Car Woes

From my Mom to my brother, sister, and then finally to me almost 8 years ago. My 1992 white Ford Taurus has served my family well. I remember going for joy rides around the block when we first got the car and how nice and new it seemed compared to our old van and our other, even older car. Its gone down the Yu food chain and now its the oldest of our fleet of cars (yes, we live in California where its necessary to have five cars for the five of us in our house), and now I think it senses that its almost time to walk towards the white light.

For a Ford, the Taurus has been surprisingly reliable and I can't remember if we've ever had any serious engine trouble with it. Its powerful and big, and has good acceleration even though the spedometer only goes up to 85 and the brakes are kinda weak. But the Taurus has been sick for a long time. Starting in high school, if I drove for longer than 20-30 minutes, the "check engine" light would go on and the car would noticeably not run as smoothly. We got it checked out, but they couldn't find anything wrong. But it still freaked me out so since then the longest trips the Taurus goes on are 20-30 minutes drives. Also in high school during my senior year, I came out of class one afternoon and there was a small crack in the windshield. I suspect it was from kids playing hockey in the parking lot, but in the six years since then, we never fixed the crack and now it spans across more than half of the windshield. Whoops! I petitioned for my parents to fix it multiple times, citing the dangers it poses to me whenever I drive it...but its still not fixed and at this point, there's really no point.

No one drove the Taurus for most of four years while I was in college, but since coming back home almost two years ago, the AC broke, the heater broke, and a huge crack in the dashboard formed. Recently, the car has been making some strange noises on and off, it sounds like a truck sometimes when I accelerate, and once in awhile I get a whiff of burnt rubber coming from the hood...needless to say, I get a little nervous now when I have to drive it.

Also, about a week ago the Taurus got attacked by an old minivan on the freeway. I was coming home from work and I was accelerating off the on-ramp onto my own lane on the freeway when suddenly the minivan next to me started to merge into my lane...right into me. The right side of the minivan scraped up against the body of my drivers side mirror as I watched it happen literally less than a foot away from me. Basically, the guy looked in his mirrors but didn't check his blind spot. The body of my left mirror is scratched up and the actual mirror part flew out onto the freeway, while the minivan has a 1-2 ft long dent on its right side. I never realized how hard it is to drive without that driver's side mirror, but I'm hesitant to bring it to get fixed because I'm afraid they'll see my car and try to fix all the things that are obviously wrong with it, but the Taurus doesn't need to be fixed, it just needs to die in peace. The Taurus and I both need to suffer for another three more months, until I leave for Korea. Come on Taurus, you can do it!