My Ride

Howdy! Back in June, 2001 I was driving home from work along Route 46 in Parsippany when I noticed a really cool looking vehicle in front of the Jeep dealership. It sort of looked like a Jeep, but really different. I had seen my first Jeep Liberty and about a month later I owned my own Jeep Liberty Limited Edition in Patriot Blue. (the picture is not of my Jeep) I referred to it as a "fake jeep" considering it had lots of luxuries like leather seats and steering wheel, everything electric, heated seats and side mirrors, etc. Over the years this Jeep helped people move, made warehouse runs for the deli and took me lots and lots of places. Only a few months after buying the Jeep I moved down the Jersey Shore meaning that I had a roughly one hour commute each way everyday for work. This length of commute lasted until I moved down here to Charlotte which of course means lots of mileage going onto the vehicle.

Over the years my Jeep took to places from Manassas, Va in the south to Boston, Ma in the north as well as Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal numerous times. Although I loved the car, I wasn't the best owner, being bad on getting oil changes (sometimes going over 20,000 miles and nearly a year between oil changes) In it's 3rd or 4th year the car was found to have a cracked engine block and the dealership just put some "stop leak" in the cooling system and it ran fine. I had to repeat that process a couple of times over the years.

Well, all good things must come to an end. In early November, 2008 just a month after hitting 210,000 miles the Jeep started acting up again as if it needed it's shot of "stop leak". Well, that didn't help this time - in the three mile commute to work the car was overheating and the engine started to make some noises that didn't really sound very good. So, on November 17, I broke down and called the garage that had been servicing my Jeep and they sent a flatbed to pick it up from work. The news was bad this time ... two cylinders and a few rods were gone which meant that a new engine was needed to keep the Jeep on the road. With an estimate of between $4,000 and $7,000 to have that done, the decision had to be made to say good-bye to the car that was part of me for over 100 months - and I hate shopping for a car.

Lucky for me, one of the woman in our sales department had a connection with one of the local dealers here in Charlotte. So I made my way to the dealership to see what they could do for me. With no money for a down payment, a mortgage that was in arrears in NJ and a poor credit rating I wasn't very positive that I'd be able to get anything worthwhile. A call was made to the GM of the dealership and I explained my situation to the salesman. I must say, the dealership did everything in their power to get me into a car. After the first visit on a Friday, I needed to return on Saturday to pick up a white 2007 Ford Focus that was previously a rental car in Chicago. The car had around 30,000 miles on it but ran fine. A little smaller than what I was used to, but it was a set of wheels to get me from point A to point B safely.

I signed and filled out the paperwork needed, but when I got home and went to insure it I couldn't find the name of the loan holder anyplace. I received a call a few days later asking me to come back in because they needed some further information from me. Knowing that I was going to have car payments again, which I haven't had in over a year - I checked on my retirement account to see if there was any money available to take out to pay off some outstanding debt to get it out of the way and found that I was legally able to take out $2,000 - so I made the request for the money. When I got to the dealership the next day, I was told that due to the mortgage issues back in NJ, they are having trouble finding a lender to approve my loan for the Ford Focus. If I was able to come up with more of a down payment, then they might have a chance. So an appointment was made to go back when the funds were in my account.

I returned at 1:00pm a couple of days later with a check expecting to leave a short time later with my new car. Well, as things happen in my life, that was not going to happen. After sitting across the desk from my salesman for about 3 hours while the credit manager worked on my loan, my salesman was called over to the credit desk. He came back to let me know that they would not be able to sell me the Focus, because they could not get a lender to finance that car for me. But the GM had told them that I had to leave in a car that night. They had two cars that could be financed. Both were pretty much the same car but a difference in color - 4 door 2008 Hyundai Accents - one in ice blue the other in white and both had about 17,000 miles on them. I test drove the blue one because the white one wasn't on the lot that night. I opted for the white one and left the dealership about 8:00 pm (7 hours after I arrived) to return the next day after work to pick up my new car. From the time I first entered the dealership until I picked up the car was just about 2 weeks and although it sounds like it was challenging at times, I really have to say that the dealership worked their butts off to get me into a car and I am very grateful for that!

The drive back to NJ for Christmas was done in this new car -- it has a 10 gallon gas tank that I only had to fill twice each way!! I would have filled the Jeep at least twice as many times, YAY! It's taking a little getting used to, but overall, so far I'm happy with my new car!

Thanks for reading and more news to come!