At long last, I finally got my car back.

As you may know, several weeks ago I had a tiny problem with my car - FIRE. I won’t go into explaining what exactly happened, but I can say that I am lucky to be alive.

One of the things that caught fire was the fuel line… You can figure out what could have happened from there. The guys at George and Bob’s Service were awesome and got me fixed up as soon as they could. The only delay was that the parts that were needed were on national back order.

My car is an Olsmobile Alero — neither the make or model are manufactured anymore and I get that. My bitch is that the parts needed to fix my car are STANDARD GM PARTS. Now forgetting for a second the fact that due to faulty construction and being a generally shi–y car that I could’ve been killed — that aside: It takes GM almost 3 weeks to cough up the parts?

I’m all about supporting our economy. God knows it needs it right now. They say we’re supposed to buy American which is what I did when I bought this car. It seems that cars and a handful of other things are the only thing we manufacture anymore. But I’ll tell ya what…

I used to drive Japanese cars. I know that overzealous flag-waivers are going to get pissed at me about this but hear me out:

I’ve spent more money repairing and maintaing this car than any other in my life. I’ve had more problems with it than any other in my life. Every time I have to get it repaired the mechanic says the words that now get me more hostile than a bull in Spain: “… yeah, we see a lot of this type of problem with these cars…”

GM knows these are problems and doesn’t fix them!!! They could make their parts better and longer lasting and they KNOW IT but they make a killing selling replacement parts! It’s part of their bottom line! I am hearing this from industry insiders right here in Rochester. People who KNOW CARS.

Again, I’m fully supportive of buying American products (if you can find them) and I think we all should. But when it comes to this type of thing, probably like a lot of people, I just can’t afford it.

When I start seeing GM cars back on top of consumer reports for reliability, I’ll be happy to buy another one again. Till then, the way I see it, I’m left with little choice.

Rock On…

Big Marc