Well, Marshall McLuhan’s quotation may be accurate, but sometimes the car feels like Heracles’ tunic steeped in the blood of Nessus. All of which is an absurdly pretentious way of saying that I took my car in to the dealers this morning, “unwontedly” as it were. I carefully described the shudders from the transmission that I had felt on my way home last night, and pointed out the blinking (and undocumented) icon that had appeared on one of the dashboard displays. And after a protracted examination, it was announced (“Do you want to sit down first?”) that the vehicle needed a replacement transmission, which would cost $3,000. (“Of course, you could opt for a transmission rebuild for about $2,500, but…”, said the service manager, shaking his head slowly to imply that only a palooka would do something so foolish.)
I rather wish that this was an uneconomic thing to do; that I could simply say “Hell, no!” and get myself a new car. Sadly, the car in question (99 Mercury Cougar 2.5V6) only has 65K miles on it, and the price to repair it is less than its trade-in value (Kelly gives $5,000, NADA gives $6,175), so I guess I’ll bite the bullet.
But I feel Heracles’ pain….
[UPDATE: Several friends have urged me to look into getting the car fixed at a specialist transmission shop like AAMCO. I’ll think about it, but the logistics are extremely complicated because of travel commitments.]