At the beginning June the check engine light in my 2008 Volvo convertible came on. This car is the replacement for the one I wrote about several years ago — same model, 10 years younger, slightly different shade of blue. I’ve had it since around 2010.
A few days later I went to Europe, so I didn’t have time to deal with it. In Spain I rented manual transmission cars and had a blast driving around Mallorca.
Back home in late June I got my act together and made an appointment for the car, which was also due for inspection in July. I opted to wait at the dealer repair shop to find out what needed to be done. It turned out to be a waste of three or four hours.
The repair needed to correct the check engine light would cost $17,000. And, of course, the car could not pass inspection with the light on. Fortunately, the car was driveable, so I drove it home.
I was fond of that car. However, the air conditioning died three or four years ago and summer driving has been hard. Last year the headliner came unglued, making it difficult to lower the convertible top. There were other quirks, and I’d sunk several thousand into it the last couple years for other repairs. It was time to move on. Even so, it took me a couple days to accept the fact that I was about to spend a lot of money — a lot more than $17,000 — or incur some debt. Or both.
I made a wish list: Manual transmission, because by gosh if I had to do this, I was going to get what I’ve wanted for the past several decades; convertible, because I love to put the top down and I’m not compromising on that; not too old, perhaps from the current decade. I already knew there were no hybrids or EVs matching my list. And I’m reluctant to go EV, given that I do some long drives and don’t want to add the challenge of finding a charging station along the way.
So I plugged my search criteria into various car search sites and held my breath. My screen was flooded with Mustangs. There were also BMWs and other high-end brands, and some Minis and Miatas. I drove a Fiat Spider for years and I know I need more room, so I filtered out the cute little roadsters. My results included a Volvo convertible — an automatic, not manual — because those sites give you vehicles that don’t match all your criteria. I was glad to see it, not because it was a chance to replace my current Volvo, but because it made me realized I needed to move on. The last model year of the Volvo C70 was 2012. I’d be buying the same set of problems that I was trying to get away from.
It was easy to eliminate the BMWs and Saabs and other high-end brands simply by price. Which left me with the Mustangs. The first car I drove after driver’s ed was my mom’s 1967 Mustang (not a convertible). That had also been the first car where I got to sit in the front passenger seat, when she first got it and I was 9. But I digress. So the Mustangs were not completely alien to me.
I became more picky about age and mileage, accepting that meant dollars. I sent a couple enquiries to dealerships. By the end of the week I was in conversation with a dealership right across the Hudson River that had a two-year-old red convertible, black interior, standard transmission V8.
On Saturday I went over for a test drive. As the salesman opened the door and looked in, he turned to me and said, “oh, you know it’s a manual, right?”
I chuckled. “Yes, that is on purpose.”
It was a good thing I’d been driving those standards in Spain, or I might have embarrassed myself getting out of the dealer’s lot. Needless to say, after a drive around in the growling monster I sat down and did the financing paperwork. Unfortunately, I could not drive it home — the DMV was closed until Monday. Plus I needed a bank check for my down payment and to dig up the title for the Volvo.
So on Monday, July 13 I went back across the river, said thank you and farewell to the Volvo, and drove home in the big red machine.
And as I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Tappan Zee bridge I realized that for months I’ve been looking forward to being able to drive soon after my upcoming left knee replacement (the doctor would not let me drive for a month after the right knee operation), and I’d just squashed that by getting a standard transmission.
Life is full of trade-offs. And trade-ins.
Mia's Mar Vista News 