Welcome All Ya'll

Last Tuesday, March 6th, my dearest husband drove me down to Phoenix to board a Midnight Flight to Georgia (The Gladys Knight and The Pips song should come into your head right about now...). Via a Greyhound the next morning, I reached the town of Albany and called Norman. He picked me up at the station and took me over to his shop- Classic Automotive, where I exchanged $1,026 and one cent for Miss Selma Lee Suiby.

I then proceeded to drive 2, 017 miles (estimated from a map, as the odometer wasn't feeling up to keeping count for me) over four days, less then 40 of those miles being on interstates.

It can be done. You can drive across the country on US highways and state routes. I would particularly recommend it if you don't trust your car to consistently go over 60 miles per hour.

I'm trying to find out more information about my dear Selma Lee. I have a title from 1988, showing her in Tifton, Georgia (not far from Albany) with 187,525 miles. The odometer currently reads 188,924... so I'm presuming it gave up hope sometime before the 90's. Can't really blame it considering the music it was probably playing around then.

It was bought in 1988 with a loan (you can't get a car loan for an 11 year old car these days...), and in April of 2005 the bank that carried the loan transfered the title to a Holly Automotive, which no longer appears to be in business. It seems odd that there would have been even close to a seven year loan on a car that old- so I'm presuming the owner couldn't pay off the loan, but it took some time before the Bank managed to get, and then get rid, of the car. The same title was transfered the next day to a gentleman who never retitled the car. At that point, the odometer is specified to be inaccurate. Somewhere along the way the car stopped running well at all. Tim- the gentleman that bought the car in '05, had it sitting around for awhile, before he brought it in to Classic Automotive in Albany, and asked them to get it running again.

It received a new motor (with approximately 120,000 miles on it, out of an identical Benz), a new alternator, glow plugs, and a few other odds and ends. Norman then called Tim to come get his car. Tim never came in. A month later they called and reached Tim's Wife- the call went something like this.

Norman- Hello, I'm calling from Classic Automotive we're trying to reach Tim about picking up his car.
Tim's Wife- What car???
Norman- Umm...
(then there was some yelling and screaming about how she had told Tim they couldn't afford to fix it up right now- and Tim's Wife offered to send Norman the title to the car in payment- so Tim lost the car and his wife's good favor and I wonder whether he might have preferred it the other way around.

So- Tim's Wife got Tim to sign over the title (which is still the one from '88 cause he never retitled it- presumably cause it wasn't being driven) and that's how Norman ended up selling it- trying to recoup the monies that had been put into the new parts for the car, which it sounds like he just barely managed to do.

I'm trying to figure out if those CarFax reports give you the title history and whatnot- or just say Problem!!! or No Problem!!! cause I don't know how else to find about about it's pre-'88 history- which I would find interesting to know.

We'll see how that goes.

Later, I may write about the trip from Georgia to Arizona. Suffice- it was interesting. And I got 27 miles per gallon, averaged over the whole trip which I'm pleased with.

And so- the blogging begins.