Speaking to our "winter vehicles": (we've never been able to bring ourselves to subjecting nicer/newer cars to the road salt in OH) - - -
- Sandy's Blazer: She's always been absolutely in LOVE with the thing as it handles so great in the winter, having all-wheel drive. It always gets her back and forth to where she wants/needs to go.....only left her stranded once, at work due to a dead fuel pump (a fairly common malady on these). Given that it's 14 years old with 220k+ miles on it, that's pretty good. But this thing's starting to wear us out with expenses - fairly common stuff that will always fail/wear out over time. But as long as she's still loving it, I guess we'll keep throwing money at it to keep it going!
- My Civic: I've only had this about 7-8 months - happened across it via a friend this past spring so we snapped it up, knowing it would be a great "winter vehicle" for me (my previous winter car got creamed - read: totaled - in March compliments of a left-of-center driver). I only started driving the Civic regularly about a month ago. Wouldn't you know it - we whacked a deer (a big ol' buck) last night about a mile from our home. Wonderful. Actually, he plowed into us! Did the deed on the entire right side of the car - everything's damaged from stem to stern............but it's still fully functional and driveable. The right side's just pretty well boogered up. Oh well. And sorry about our luck - fairly inexpensive car to start with so I opted to not put collision or comprehensive coverage on it. Bummer. But........it'll still do great for a wintertime vehicle! It's just gonna look pretty goofy with all the dents on the side! It WAS a really nice little car!
Bill