Cars and things...

Last night the f***ing transmission/clutch of my Toyota Corolla gave out... The thing started to whine, grind and finally jolt. Acrid smoke started to come out from under the car. The only good thing is that I wasn't far from home and finally limped into the driveway. The language I used about the situation would have blistered the paint off the barn at 100 meters. (This is one advantage of being bilingual, it gives you so much more material for creative swearing) This car must have been made on a Friday at 4pm just before a long weekend... after a year changed the bearings on the transmission, after 2.5 years changed the linking arm for the wipers (took them over a week to get the part since this happens so rarely), the anti-theft stopped working, the A/C died when its bearings seized, the check motor light kept coming on despite changing just about every part in the pollution control system... the motor takes about a gallon of oil between oil changes and sounds like a farm tractor, the suspension always makes the ride interesting, and finally the transmission/clutch gave up the ghost with a screeching whine and a crunch... We've always had Toyota and never had any problems. We ran the cars into the 270000 km's and still they ran, yet this one was one big pain in the kiester. One thing is sure, I'm not pouring more money into the thing... to paraphrase Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch... "it is dead, defunct, passed away, this is a dead car... it is not sleeping, it is DEAD". So I guess I'll soon be paying car payments again but it won't be to Toyota.