Cars and the Economy

Things truly suck at this point. Not just for me, but for many. Car dealerships are being invited to no longer franchise with the companies they grew with for many years. So many will lose their jobs. It is a terrible and frightful situation. At the very least, it will prolong our economic recovery. At the very worst? Hey, I am not a doomsayer, but a dear friend is very concerned that the weaker the United States becomes, the easier it would be for another government to take us over. THAT would be the ultimate in sucki-ness in my opinion.

Hm. Car dealerships. Many years ago, I purchased a brand new car. The thing had something like 37 miles on it when I took delivery. It smelled wonderful! The paint job was a metallic black (not the proper name, but its been too long to recall the paint name) and changed color depending on the light. Ah she was beautiful!!! I wanted a smaller car with good gas mileage (I'd been driving a beat up old Ford mini-van that got 10 mpg.) I went to Saturn and purchased the car with little down and for 0% interest. (yeah, I had excellent credit back then.)

When I started law school, the old girl was still under warranty (don't ask me what parts were still under warranty, I just don't know, and now it doesn't matter.) And, now she is in her eighth year. Things go bad on older cars. It's a fact of life.

SO, the other day, it was hot in my area. Really really hot. I was preparing a pleading for a client and needed my Blue Book. It was not on the bookshelf or any of the random places I work and prepare for teaching. I thought it might be in the trunk. When I went to look, it was not there, so I looked in the passenger compartment. The book wasn't there either. The car interior was steaming hot though, and I rolled down ALL the windows.

I finished doing whatever I was doing, and headed out to teach. The temperature had climbed even more. I flipped on the AC. As soon as the air turned cool, I reached over and rolled up the back windows (the switch is on the console.) Soon the air was colder, and I reached over to roll up the front windows. Nothing happened. Thinking I had grabbed the back window controls again, my right hand searched for the front window buttons. Nada. I looked. NONE of the windows rolled up. All of them were stuck in the down position.

This happened once before, when the car was still under warranty. It was the window switch in the console. The next morning, I dropped my son at school and headed straight for the dealership near my house to purchase a new switch.

MUCH to my surprise, the dealership is gone. Gone. After a little investigation, I found that the dealer had 'resigned' his dealership a month ago. This particular dealership was the ONLY one in town. No, that isn't completely accurate, there were 3 locations, but all were owned by this one company. All three local dealerships are gone. The car that I have had for more than seven years no longer has an 'originating family' nearby.

I feel betrayed.

Are my windows working now? Long story short, the switch isn't the problem. I spent a solid week working on this issue, changing fuses, every male I know who works on cars has helped in one way or another with this. There were lots of chilly rides in the car (because being in the mid-west means your weather changes a lot and very quickly.) And, there were many days of the car sitting in the drive, under a tarp to keep the rain out. Luckily there was really only one day I needed my daughter to come and drive me places.

The windows are now UP, but non-functional. There is a wiring issue somewhere between the underhood fuse and the switch itself.

This spiral down needs to stop. We need to be able to level out and start the climb back. Please, please! let this stuff with the car companies be the last downward movement.