One must buy a Lemon at least once in their life I suppose. It is, perhaps, a right of passage: an initiation into the dark underbelly of used car sales. To the untrained eye the Lemon seems a shining example of a roadworthy apparatus. The dings in the side are ignored and the worn and torn interior is dismissed. You want a fixer upper, and this old clunker is exactly what you have been looking for. So you buy it. And that is when your troubles begin.
Dustin and I, as you know, recently purchased a 1983 Mercedes Benz Turbo Diesel from an independent, husband and wife sales team out in Hickory, North Carolina. We made the hour and a half drive out there to look at it, tired of all the flakes that had not called us back and excited to actually be making progress in our car hunt. The car was not ready for the road when we looked at it, but the man was in the process of putting it back together. There were about 5 gutted Mercedes all around him and his hands were black from manual labor. The car was nothing pretty to look at, but the price was right and he offered to take us for a test spin. We piled into the old beater and set off upon the road.
"The brakes are the only problem" he said in a thick Rhode Island accent. "And I intend to make them road worthy for you before you drive it."
He and his wife seemed like decent enough people and we were more than anxious to get our second car. Even more exciting was the prospect that we were going to be able to run it on bio-diesel: the granola fuel of the future. So, the down payment was made and we left in our Toyota pickup, happy and anxious to pick up our new ride in a few days.
A few days flies by and we are back in Hickory to claim our Benz. Being that we are running on Carolina time, and that the North Carolina licencing sector of the DMV is a study in bright red, thick and knotted bureaucratic red tape, the trip did not go as planned. We were not able to obtain temporary permits and we drove back to Asheville without our new Diesel.
Third time's the charm, they always say, and we were hoping for as much as we made our third trip out on I-40 East. The day was immaculate and one could not help but feel optimistic about every endeavor. We arrived at the house and saw our precious car sitting out on the lawn, washed, polished and seemingly ready for business. With the papers signed, the title handed over we were given the keys and the usual thank yous and niceties were uttered. Dustin hopped in the Benz and I in the truck and we set out off on the open road, our mouths fixed in excited and relieved grins.
The happiness was short lived. As we stopped at a gas station to fuel up Dustin came over and informed me with a grim look that the brakes were, in fact, not road worthy and he was barely able to stop as he pulled up to the pump. We were a mere mile away from the residence in which we purchased the car that was looking increasingly more like a Lemon. So, we promptly turned around and drove back. The lady was nice about it and called her husband who was not there. She said he would be there in 20 minutes. We waited an hour and a half. So goes life in the time warp of Carolina time. He finally showed up, checked out the car, drove it off, came back, scratched his head and said he would fix it. We were hoping for as much, but this meant that we once again could not drive it off the property and back to Asheville. He promised to drive it to Swannanoa the next day (only 20 min. from Asheville) and gave us $30 gas money for our troubles. We, once again, drove back home in our Toyota. The perfect day did nothing, this time around, to cheer our morose moods as we made the disappointed journey back to the mountains.
Round Four: The "next day" promised delivery was of course, postponed to the day after that and we went to pick up the said jalopy in front of a Harley Davidson dealership. The irony of it was not lost on me as we pulled up to the store full of shiny, newly polished machines that run smoothly and effortlessly, to pick up our slightly rusty, barely drivable old beater. The man from whom we purchased it from was not there when we arrived, he had to get back to Hickory in a hurry apparently. After we had to jump start the damn thing to get it off the lot, I could see why he didn't want to be there for our arrival. I followed Dustin for the very slow drive back to Asheville. When we arrived in our driveway Dustin got out of the car, his face red and his eyes angry.
"Brakes still don't work" he growled. "And the speedometer is broken."
We sat in silence in our driveway staring at the tired old car, which could now, be fairly categorized as: A Lemon.
We brought the Lemon in to be analyzed and were informed that aside from a bevvy of other problems that were keeping it from passing safety inspection, the brake pads were barely being held in place by nails. It would cost well over what we paid for the car in the beginning to get it road worthy. Our hearts sank and we moped back home to deliberate about what to do. In our contract with the man from Hickory, the brakes must be made ready to pass safety inspection. So we called he and his wife to remind them of as much. They are agreeing, as they must, to fix the brakes and once they do we are going to promptly sell it. Our dreams of being responsible, bio fuel pumping citizens are slowly disappearing. Not that there aren't any diesel vehicles out there to buy, but the prices aren't right and we don't want a repeat fiasco of what we are going through right now. We are still on the hunt mind you, but at this rate, the prospects of purchasing a cheap little Honda are more and more appealing.
And so the Lemon appears before you, where before your dream car once sat. The reality of its Lemon-ness sinks under your skin and you can't believe you were such a sucker. The only thing left to say is:
C'est la vie.
