My Pretty New Car...Revisited

The original post was years ago. But suddenly I got a comment on it, asking how it was doing. Weird, huh? Nobody I'd ever heard of, but scrolling to the bottom, there was a link to a car dealership for a different kind of car.

Ulterior motive, much?

Here's how my Hyundai Accent is doing. The paint job is fine, minus one chip where a rock has knocked all the paint off, not just the white over-coat. A spray can and some tape to keep the drift off the headlight will fix that just fine, if it ever stops raining. And if I think about it.

I rolled over 280,00 last week, so it's just getting broken in nicely. I'm planning on another couple years on it, now that our company dropped it's requirement on vehicles by model year and just goes for condition. Unless, of course, another Bambi decides to use me for its assisted suicide. They've been scarce all winter, but now the roadsides are covered with ripening corpses, including fawns. Epidemic of deer depression? Or cutbacks preventing clean-ups? Yes, the sequester does have effects.

New tires also went on last week, and belts are coming due in another couple months, probably just before heading down to Arizona again. I've not yet needed brakes.

You hear that, Mazda? Your crappy car in the late 80's required pads every 35,000 miles, and your representative tried to claim it was my bad driving. Not so much, huh? Hyundai's brakes actually last.

It has needed minor repairs not counted as maintenance: 2 of the 4 engine coils had to be replaced. A switch or something needed replacement when my brake lights failed to flash when I was stopping. Luckily somebody followed me to to my parking spot to let me know he'd almost hit me, so I knew to fix it immediately. As it happened, it was a month before the recall notice arrived. Figures, eh? And my alternator is new.

The most annoying thing about my car? The bug collection on the front bumper. It is only because the fashion on car bumpers changed years ago from black rubber to white composite, or rather something matching the rest of the car body. I miss black rubber bumpers. Little scrapes didn't show up, and who cared about bugs on black rubber? But I doubt it'll change back. Too much profit from replacing the new style bumpers system wide.

So yes, I'm still happy with my -what is it now?- 6th Hyundai? Looking forward to my next one... in a couple years.