I mentioned my car’s in the shop for repairs.  It needed new tires and the front passenger side brake caliper was seizing.  It’s a problem I’ve been having with this car since I bought it a little over 2 years ago.  When it started to exhibit the telltale behavior I drove it as quickly as I could to my mechanic.  Left unchecked, the situation gets ugly.  I know this from experience.  How did I get here?

When I graduated from college (yeah, I meant ‘how did I get here’), I fled to the Atlanta suburbs to live with my parents and lick my wounds.  I was driving an Escort wagon at the time, graciously provided to me by the folks during my college years.  This was after I wrecked their Contour and left it in a ditch in Connecticut.  So proud…..

Actually, I awoke the morning of my journey to Georgia to find a tire on the Escort flat.  I filled it and hit the road, checking in and filling it periodically over the course of the ~1,000 mile drive to keep it inflated.  My spare was tucked away safely below everything I owned in the rear of the car.  No way, no how was I emptying that sucka and no way, no how was I prolonging my exodus.

10 months into my Georgian escape and I’m sitting on the couch when this appears on TV;

Uh, hell to the yeezy. There was nothing like this on the road at the time. One problem – no job and no money. I sprang to action and found a job up north.  Before I was even through my 2 month probationary review period at the new job I was picking up a brand new 2002 WRX off the lot. Here he is. I called him turbosaurus wrx. T-WRX for short.

The feeling of driving it off the lot was euphoric. I promptly drove 4 hours straight to Providence, RI from NH. Honestly, I got the job also because I was really decaying in Georgia.  I couldn’t find any meaningless jobs and I wasn’t really interested in settling down there. Figured I should put all that schoolin to good use.

5 years later I was a homeowner and engaged. Also euphoric. 😉 T-wrx was just shy of 100k miles and I was starting to get annoyed with the fact that the seats didn’t fold down for picking things up at Home Depot or that it wasn’t meant for toting folks around comfortably. It seemed like he was going to start needing a lot of work. So I began considering something with a little more utility and I found this used beauty at a local dealer.

In hindsight I should have passed because it had nearly as many miles as the WRX it was replacing.  But it was a silver, all wheel drive, sport packaged, manual transmissioned station wagon.  I could have gotten a Subaru wagon for less but the emotional side takes hold, you know?  On the day that I left the WRX with the dealer it wouldn’t start back up for them. I’m not sure whether to interpret that as a broken heart or that it was -25° outside and I was offloading at the right time.  Either way, I hopped in the BMW, wished them luck and drove away. I knew I was leaving behind the raw performance and excitement but this BMW is fun to drive, handles well, and it satisfies my criteria for more utility without robbing me entirely of the pleasures of driving or decent gas mileage.  A Legacy wagon would not make me smile when I drove it.  I kinda need that, I want more from driving than getting from A to B.

Anyway, this car has needed more too.  More work. I’ve had to replace a set of tires that were prematurely ruined by broken suspension in the rear.  I’ve had the front brakes seize on me 3 times in 2 years.  First time we replaced the front rotors and pads and agreed to keep an eye on it.  The next time it happened suddenly and I was 3 hours from home.  The pads and rotor on the driver side were ruined getting back, so we replaced them and the guilty caliper and brake line.  You have to replace pads and rotors on both sides typically to avoid the car lurching to one side or the other due to the asymmetry in breaking power.  Oh joy.  So on the side that hadn’t seized I was replacing essentially brand new stuff.  This last seizure happened locally and I was able to get it to the shop before ruining the pads and rotor.  This time it was the passenger side and we’re replacing that caliper.  I wish we had done it last time, but it is what it is.  I think he was loathe to spend more of my money on something that he didn’t think needed to be done at the time.  I’m hoping that since we’ve now basically replaced everything I’ll be free and clear.  Time will tell.  I’m not sure what this bill is going to look like yet.  It is laying waste to my HTPC budget, I’ll say that much.

Oh, but the worm turns!  You thought I was done?!  This is where hindsight again comes into play.  We’ve since inherited a pickup truck.  I know, hard times.  There were rumors it might be afoot but had I known this was going to definitely happen, I would have replaced the WRX with…. nothing probably.  You can’t do this with a BMW wagon, unless you have hate in your heart.

Or this;

That’s right, we’ve gone full retar… I mean country. We’re covered in the utility department, and while I never ever would have run out and bought a truck with a plow, there isn’t a tremendous need for a station wagon that’s constantly breaking now. I’m considering giving it the ax. Would I promote the truck to daily driver status? I dunno. It’s novel but I’m only really smiling when I’m pushing snow around the driveway or crawling up some class IV road.  I drove 5 hours over the mountains in the truck last weekend and… the results were not thrilling. Unless you count the leaf spring technology from the 1800s throwing the back end all over the place. The ace up the BMW’s sleeve is that it’s paid off.  Anything I replace it with will probably end up putting us in debt – something we both hate with a passion.  Or worse, bore me.  I think I’ll see how long it takes until the wagon’s back in the shop again and go from there. If I can just get in a solid year without spending a small fortune I’ll be happy…. although I said that last year.