One of the mechanics I work with wife passed away 2 years ago and he told me she had a 2002 L200 she bought new and it had always been garage kept and he was thinking about selling it. I told him my daughters (21 and 17 year old) just got drivers permits few months back and would be getting driver's license soon and I would be interested in it. He brought it to work and left it and told me he wanted to check everything and I could see he was torn about selling it. After 2 weeks he told me he wanted to put new brakes on it even though it had more than half a pad left. I told him ok and if he was going to sell it I wanted to put new tires on it while he had wheels off. He told me he didn't want to sell it but he would never use it and couldn't look at it everyday. It has been at her daughters house for the past 2 years in her garage, he would go once a month and drive it around the block and put it back in the garage but the daughter wants her garage back. He decided to sell it to my girls. They had money saved and bought it. It is a 2002 Saturn L200 with 72,000 miles. I don't think the backseat had ever been sat in.
Nothing against your daughters. But, I was once 17 and 21 myself to know that people of that age tend not to think about caring for their cars. This one's in too nice a shape. I'd buy it and keep it for yourself, until your daughters reach an age to where they've got careers or family going. Or if you start liking it, just keep it for yourself permanently and find your daughters girly cars which it wouldn't matter if milkshakes were to spill on the carpet and fries were to land somewhere between the cheeks of upholstery. Not to mention, cigarette burns from either them or the people they hang out with. Especially, if their male. If I were my dad, I would have not let me even get near that car, before I had turned 50. It needs a loving owner. I'm sure, that widower you bought it from would appreciate it landing in good hands
I faintly remember being 17 and 21. Never expected to survive past 25! I'm sure your daughters will take good care of their "new" car.
Like the guy says. If I’d a known I was gonna live this long I would have taken better care of myself.
Ha, ha! I've thrown in my chips already. My niece on my ex's side wanted a car, right about the time we got our Mondeo wagon. At the time, we had that Suzuki Swift that the ex got for dirt cheap from an elderly friend of her mom's. I can't remember if it either had 1,600 kilometers or 16,000 on it. In any event, it was practically a new car. The lady who owned it was getting up in the years. I think, she was over 90. She had some administrative job with the government, meaning that she wasn't hard up for money, since her pension was quite generous. So, it wasn't an issue about buying it. The car was okay, as long as the kids were still small. We threw a rack onto the roof, for what didn't fit in the tiny luggage compartment, when going on vacations. I took great care of it and did all maintenance religiously of what was to be done. We didn't put that many miles on it, since we lived in a city of which we could access most anything by foot, streetcar or bicycle. I think, all I ever did on it was to change the oil with filter and maybe the air filter and brake fluid. There simply wasn't anything left to do on it. We drove it as far as to Italy, without even having a breakdown in the back of our minds. That's how confident we were about it. Anyway, we needed a larger car, since the kids wouldn't stop growing, and the ex was offered that Mondeo wagon from a work collegue for only 500€. It had well over 100,000 Kilometers. but, was still a good car. Since we didn't have anywhere to park an unregistered vehicle, the opportunity came around for offing the Suzuki onto the niece. Which wasn't a good idea. She wasn't stupid, since she was good in college. She was just a slob with other things and was addicted to that "Smart" Phone of hers, just like her dad was. He was one of these Bill Gates impersonator types who took his cars into service garages. So, it never occured to him as to maybe brief his daughter on once in a while checking the tire pressure or oil level. Since she herself had that typical Social Networks Hough mentality, the car was only important to her if it would start up and the radio would work. Speaking of the radio, she had some college acquaintance hook one up and he did a miserasble job. There were bare connections all over the place and you could tell that some kid attempted it. So, I got a call from her mother with the request to only iron out the radio installation, despite the urgency of attending to the general neglect she was good at. I was so disappointed that I only patched the electrical connections and didn't want anything else to do with the car, seeing how she did a good job of running it down to where it already had a wheel in the junkyard. I'm lucky that my daughter has no interest in driving, despite her having a license. The general lack of road discipline combined with my road rage at the general lawlessness in this society probably had influence on her. It seems, the best way to teach kids would be to let them get a car with their own hard-earned money. So, that they could experience it for themselves as to what it's like when they screw up their stewardship of their very own car
