The Problem With Cheap Cars...

...Is that when something bad and expensive happens to them, they don't look like such great investments. And particularly when that bad thing was the fault of an architect.

We were on our way to a Christmas party the other night in downtown Cincinnati. When we got to the building, I of course observed that parking was tight everywhere (why, I do not know, as this wasn't exactly The Magnificent Mile). Anyhow, I spotted an entrance to what seemed to be a below-ground parking deck, so as I nosed the Jag in, I heard the most awful noise from underneath the car. I stopped dead in my tracks only to find that the garage door at the bottom of this slope was closed and that my car seemed a hell of a lot louder. As I carefully reversed out, trying to do so at an angle to avoid any more exhaust torture, I must have hit it exactly wrong somewhere because all it took was one last "graaaauuunchhhh" and my car now sounded like Andrew Jeffrey's Lister XJ6 race car.

So here is my dilemma, dear friends...

I haven't the heart to take even a $400.00 XJ6 to Midas to have them butcher it to hell and back.

My cost on a new system, with hardware, and fitting it myself will be around $900.00.

** I should note that I haven't yet had a look underneath the car to see how bad the damage actually is. I've parked it for the last few days and will hopefully report on the reality of it later today when I get it up onto the lift.

***However, in the event that the system isn't salvageable, I'm pretty much stuck with buying all new components, as I'm not even going to try to "cut and paste" new with old stuff. But, let's take a quick moment to analyze the finances of it all:

-Car $400.00
-Initial service (all fluids, filters, etc...) $200.00
-Two new front brake calipers $200.00
-Two new rear tires, mounted and balanced $200.00

Total thus far: $1,000.00 (ok, still not bad money for a decent Series III)

-New exhaust $800.00

New total: $1,800.00 (that's probably teetering on the brink of what this car's worth)

* My point is that I just sold a Mercedes 300E on which the owner had spent over $20K in maintenance over the last seven years. And I sold it for $2K because that's, unfortunately, all the market will bear for those old W124 Mercs. Now that I'm getting close to the $2K point in the Jag, I'm wondering if I should cut loose while I still can, or keep plugging along with the old girl..

..I guess I'll still plug along. I love that car.