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Back in the spring of 1997 when I was driving to meet my husband for a camping trip, my little red Ford Mustang, the car my parents gave me when I turned 17, the car that was completely paid off, began smoking from the steering wheel.

So we took it into the dealership to get serviced, and being the young, inexperienced, newly married twenty-somethings that we were, we accidentally gave off vibes that said, “we might, at some unspecified time in the future, be interested in purchasing a new car,” and thus we became magnetically bonded to a salesman named Rocky, who did not leave our side for the next six hours, until we departed with not just a newly repaired Ford Mustang, but also a new Ford Explorer.

The next day we of course COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT because that was the biggest purchase we had ever made in our lives, and holy cow, what in the world had we just done?! But eventually we calmed down and realized that we could still afford to live in our apartment, and we would not have to stop eating, and everything was just fine.

Fine for us, that is. Apparently, in the Explorer’s mind, our little episode of Buyer’s Remorse was STRIKE ONE against us. [Read more…] about Car Talk