Ferrari Mailing List: Re: The cars we love to hate (No F content no way)

[Rick Lindsay (rolindsay]

   Like many cars in this class - and even the really up-scale cars - the 
performance and reliability is usually related to the owner's maintenance 
schedule.  I'd bet that your Metro has been maintained properly since new.  And 
I don't mean that you have treated it gently.  I mean that you have probably 
just kept to a regular maintenance schedule and fixed things RIGHT any time you 
have had a problem.  Given that kind of approach, most cars will run almost 
forever.
   Sadly, here in the States, most drivers equate the word 'maintenance' to the 
word 'repairs' when in actuality, maintenance is what you do to MINIMIZE the 
need for repairs.
   As you can probably tell, this is a soap-box issue for me.  For most people, 
their automobile is the second biggest purchase they ever make.  So with that 
given, why do people treat their cars like CRAP?!  
   I stop for a coffee on the way to work most mornings.  There's often a woman 
there whose car is filled with TRASH up to the windows - passenger seat and 
back seat!  I'm talking everything from old MacDonald's bags to underwear!  Its 
like a filled dumpster!  And I bet the car has never seen an oil change!  This 
example, while pathetically funny, is certainly an end-member of the spectrum.  
But even if one has zero-point-zero interest in a car, wouldn't you think that 
they would at least protect their investment?!
   By contrast, my daily driver looks and performs the way it left the factory. 
 That's not to say that my wife won't eat snacks in the car or pull hair from 
her hairbrush and throw it on the floor!   And she wonders why we always drive 
HER car on the weekends! :-P

Happy Wednesday!

rick

--- On Wed, 2/25/09, Stephen Sherman <sherman [at] wildblue.net> wrote:
> My 89 Geo Metro just turned 140,000 miles on yeaterday
> bought it new in 89 
> an has been rock solid. I run 70 most of the with jumps to
> 80. It is the 
> little engine that could.
> Looking into a plug in or hybrid to replace it but it will
> go to one our 
> daughter's children.
> 
> Stephen