brand loyalty?

After weeks of craigslist hunting,
we finally bit the bullet.

My price range was extremely low,
under 3 g's,
which made it easy to search by price rather than model.
Yep, 3 g's...way under actually.
To me thats the price point where you don't get trapped by the car.
It's nice to have the choice to either ditch or fix.

I compare looking for craigslist deals like those guys on the movie "the matrix".
There's a pattern that emerges when you know what's been for sale for a while.
Alot of the junk and overpriced cars bubble up to the top,
relisted over and over again.
Than there are the deals that are so good they don't last an hour.
Those sting a little,
but there's always the next deal.

1999 mercury grand marquis

My wife will say I bit the bullet which is true.
She still has a thing for our ailing lincoln town car.

1990 lincoln town car

I was trying to justify fixing it up,
but the stuff that is not working isn't the fun stuff to fix.
- only the drivers window rolls up and down...
- there's a rear seal leak in the engine that drips oil on the exhaust,
when going uphill anyway...
- one of the rear brakes locks up during emergency stops!!
 (experienced this on the way to look at the mercury - holy chit!)
-front window seal leaks,
so when it rains the water leaks in, onto the headlight switch,
so the headlights will go on even when parked at night.

The problem is this thing will run forever.
I'm tempted to fix the rear brakes,
register it temporarily "non-op" at the DMV
and save up some time and money to go on a one-way road trip.
How far would it get?
Canada? Panama? The Arizona desert?

The other option (other than selling it)
is keeping the 5.0 engine and AOD tranny for a project.
The engine runs really sweet,
a perfect donor...

i love craigslist

Like I said I searched and searched craigslist for deals.
Toyota Camry's, Honda Accords, Nissan Maxima's -
that's what normal people want.
Tons of Cadillacs out there for cheap too.
The thing that sucks about (affordable) Caddy's is they need super gas.
Lincoln Town Cars are out there but they're usually the high mileaged TCP taxi's.
Then there's those cool Police Interceptor Crown Victoria's.
The bummer with those is they have no rear door openers or window regulators.

Then this Mercury popped up.
Since Mercury folded a couple years ago,
I'm thinking people are a little sketchy about the name.

However, it's a Ford "Panther" based car,

with the 4.6 OHC engine,

same as the crown vics and the town cars.

Hmmm.

1999 mercury grand marquis

This was a well cared for car.

New tires, smog check, working windows, runs great!

There were enough dinks in it to scare off the super picky,

some cigarette burns and some little dents,

but we actually got it a little cheaper than the asking price.

I love it!
I'm gonna try to find some police rims though.

One thing I'll miss is those leather-ish seats of the town car.
And the computerized fuel efficiency monitors.

Other than that,

we'll see how it goes.

Thanks Tom, Richard and Hannah!
Hope you have fun with the g20 van trip!

TP