cage47
09-20-2004, 09:39 PM
Had to post the sorry tale of how I lost my last GA. I bought it in 1999. It was a 1992. Ran great. Looked real good. But in a month and a half time all went to hell. But first in the spring of 2000 we had a bad storm. Hail all over beauty got pocked with hundreds of dimples. Hail the size of marbles. Just as hard too. Then the fall of 2000 the tranny acted up. It would get stuck in gear. So bad I had to sit at a stop sign and wait for it to get out of gear. I had to start it in neutral and then jam it into first because if I stopped at the light it stuck in first and wouldn't down shift. Well I had it diagnosed. Some plate had the fingers bent back or something. Either way two weeks later I was driving to work. I-59 in Houston. Just after we bought our new house. Well I had to stop in traffic, (lucky it didn't stall) and as I was waiting I heard a car run up behind me and a quick squeel of the breaks and then, WHAM!. This chick driving daddy's nissan altima hit me in the rear and pushed me into the lincoln in front of me. Needless to say I got sandwiched. The car buckled in the middle so the doors where they meet stuck up above the top of the door jams. Not a lot, just an inch. But I bent the stearing wheel into a pretzel looking thing. Air bags didn't go off though. (Good!) Well the lincoln got some superficial damage to the bumper. My front got a little warped but the trunk was a mess. Not bad so I couldn't close or open it but bad. Of course it bowed down in the center. But that Altima. MAN it was TOTALLED! I mean the entire front end went UNDER my car and crushed it like a soda can. Only way I could tell what it was was to go around to the back. The hood was pushed back and the engine was crushed. She hit me doing 65 and barely hit the brakes. What saved my car a guy behind said was that she basically planed under my car and my rear end popped up in the air. I got $3000 for totalling it. It was timed right. I was going to plunk $1200 down the next week to get the tranny fixed. I felt like taking my old dog to the pound to put it to sleep when I traded it in. I should have faced it away cause it sat there looking so sad when I drove away. Warped front end made a kind of basset hound pout. I'm glad I didn't take pictures. The only ones I have are from when it was clean.