Where to Start
About 6 months ago my current car began a slow downward spiral of quality. I never loved this car particularly much, but nonetheless it had served me well for nearly an entire year. My car had braved the frozen tundra of Cleveland’s winter and survived. Not even two foot tall snow drifts could slow down this absolute beast of a car.
My 1995 Buick Century Special Sedan; you put the special in “Special Sedan”. With your mighty four cylinder roaring, you seethe with several horsepower. You barrel down the street with no regard for human life, with your turn signal silently blinking, no need to make a noise to the driver telling him that the turn signal is on. You know he’s going to turn right, eventually. You stalwartly defend yourself from passengers, no need to let them in until the driver is safely in the car.
So what has crippled this mighty automobile, this Thor’s chariot?
It doesn’t have a brain.
Yes, some idiotic GM engineer in 1995 decided it was a good idea to cram as many electronic components into this econo-car as was technically possible at the time. Probably so they could all fail at the same time and leave the car a witless dullard. Thank you, GM Engineer. Bravo.
When I even think of touching my brake pedal the car gets really flustered, like a patient with a lobotomy gone wrong the car has no clue what it wants to do. According the scan done at the auto shop my Buick thinks it’s going zero miles an hour and is decelerating at a value approaching negative infinity miles per hour, simultaneously…at all times. My poor flustered car reacts to this information by fully activating my anti-lock braking system at all times.
If you are unfamiliar with what this is like imagine that stepping on your brakes on the highway at 70 miles an hour makes it feel like you are careening through a split log and caltrops factory at roughly the same speed. At lower speeds the effect is much more subdued; more akin to you and your passengers being really into the music on the radio, uncontrollably bobbing along to the beat.
To Fix or Not to Fix
For those who aren’t in the know about cars: this is extremely dangerous. Any time your brakes are doing something other than fully being applied you are going to take longer to stop. This isn’t a problem in the winter when you already stop early because of inclimate weather, but in the summer when everyone else is stamping on their brakes and actually stopping it is only a matter of time until I’m threatening my continued existence.
Remember how I said a shop scanned the computer on the car. Well, they also gave me an estimate for my car: don’t fix it. To replace the burned out ABS sensors alone (which were all they could do) would be three times the net worth of the automobile. Total repairs, much of which would need to be done at a dealership, would total in excess of $4,000.
…
So what car do I get to replace this piece of shit?
