For those of you who have ever been in the process of buying a used car from a third party, you will appreciate this.
I have found me a car. It is a 98 Taurus with 100k miles on it. It is all around a great car. Here is my problem: the last Taurus I owned tried to kill me.
Twice.
Its first attempted murder was accomplished by nearly shedding a wheel at 60 mph, threatening to pitch me and my rusty steed (its a pun… get it?) off of the I-205 Glenn Jackson Bridge 100 feet into the placid but vile waters of the Columbia River. I forgave my car, though, after it was determined that the people at the tire factory had in fact not attatched my wheel correctly when changing my tires. Apperently there is some secret to putting the hub on the bolts and tightening the lug nuts, something I have done countless times, which makes the task difficult for a person who is at least nominally a professional in his field.
The second attempt on my life came when the tranny had a spat with itself. To be fair I knew of and had been cursing the transmission issues of this car for some time, and knew that it was only a matter of time until the fluid-leaking, hard shifting, gear eating travesty of American automotive engineering collapsed in on itself and destroyed the 
entire drive-train of my vehicle. Or, you know, stopped working somehow and sputtered to the side of the road. Anyway it decided to fail while I was driving on Mill Plain Ave, about 5 blocks from one of the busiest intersections in the state of Washington. With a mighty bang the transmission seized, sending me into a headlong spin, careening across two lanes of traffic while my vehicle succumbed to newtons laws and bled off the 45 miles per hour momentum it was carrying. Needless to say this caused the drivers all around me to scatter like cockroaches before a rolling cloud of Raid, only with far less coordnation. Indeed the cars nearest me nearly ran me over in their attempt to regain their places in the endless queues waiting to get out of Cascade Park (If you had ever been to cascade park, you wouldn’t blame them). Naturally none of them actually asked if I needed any help after watching my little adventure. So I guess the car didn’t actually try to kill me so much as the idiots who drive in this city did. Still doesn’t mean that I forgive that bastard car.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am more than a little apprehensive toward the idea of buying a vehicle which is both a) American made and b) a god-damn Taurus. The only American cars I have ever owned were shitty little things that broke soon after their purchase and the only Taurus I ever owned tried to kill me (twice). So yeah, it’s a concern. If this car breaks down on me within 6 months of buying it I will probaly break into a psychotic rage and begin mailing itching powder to the people who designed those infernal Taurus’.
That being said, the car is in fantastic condition. It is clean on the outside and in, it only has 100k miles on it, and will run great once I replace the O2 Sensor. I can’t wait to have a car, not only because if it is raining too hard to walk to school I can show up to class without looking like I trudged across the Mighty Columbia to get there, but I can run errends whenever I want to. Best of all: it creates an ease of access to the record stores downtown that will be just lovely.
I’m going to be out and about soon enough, so if you see me driving a bright white Taurus watch out for the wheels flying off and wave hello.
