Precision Auto

Alright, so we’re a little late with the whole blog thing, but for good reason. When we first decided to quit our comfortable jobs, move out of a great apartment, and hit the road we ran into a little problem. To hit the road you need a car… and we didn’t have one. So we set out to buy a vehicle. And we did. A low-slung roaring beast of a machine, nimble and sexy. That’s right, we became the proud owners of a mid-90’s, virgin white station wagon with a built-in booster seat for the kiddies.

Now this next part is a little painful so I’m keeping it short. Turns out that after the papers were signed, the cash had exchanged hands, and we had left the fine state of New York our noble stead turned out to be a major lemon. Did we get ripped off? Maybe. Could it have been avoided? Definitely. So… lessons learned? There are many: Don’t buy an automobile from a stranger on Craigslist. Don’t rush it. Know your mechanic. Oops. The worst part was that for the second time in a month we were facing the prospect of a road trip with no automobile.

Minor setback (but an expensive one) and a great excuse for our procrastination. Instead of hitting the highway, the first week of our trip was spent test driving every used car in New England. But this story has a happy ending and its name is Precision Auto. Not the song by 90s indie-rock legends Superchunk, but Precision Auto of Rowley, Massachusetts, a place where old Volvos go to die but instead are reborn. There we found our current ride (paid for in part by the first mistake). It’s a 1995 Volvo 850 sedan. It has four wheels, a stick shift, and drives great. Isn’t it pretty?

Best of all was the mileage, only 65,000 on the odometer. Barely broken in for a Volvo. Seemed great. And then everything began to go bad again. On our way from Massachusetts to Maryland I noticed we were getting great mileage. And I mean really unbelievably fantastic mileage considering the car – like 50 mpg. Wow. What great Swedish engineering! But no, turned out the odometer was racking up miles faster than the price of oil rose last month. It seemed that for every mile we traveled the odometer counted two. Still feeling burned from the first time around I imagined the worst; another busted car, a week lost to repairs, an already slim wallet growing slimmer. With a heavy heart I turned to the internet and tried to find out what was wrong this time.

Well… turns out that our new Volvo, which from here on will be known as Precision Auto, is an import from Belgium. That’s right. Europe. Which means standard transmissions and odometers geared to the metric system. The upshot is that our car actually has far fewer miles on it than we originally thought (15,000 to be exact. Woohoo.). So with any luck, we’ve left our bad-car days behind and can concentrate on crossing America, one kilometer at a time.