The Fate of the Buick

There is a fine line between a good old car and a beater.  My 2006 Buick Lucerne is teetering somewhere on that line.  It’s sad.  Having given up so much in 2020 I hate like hell to give up my Buick. 

There are cosmetic issues, but they are not bad at all.  One day while leaving my garden I jumped in the driver’s seat with something sharp in the back pocket of my bibs and caused a small slice and a puncture in the leather.  Four inches of appropriately colored tape on the driver's seat will not only hide that tear but keep it from spreading.

Near the grille, which required replacement after an unfortunate incident in Pensacola Florida on my 2018 road trip, some paint is flaking off.  It creates a relatively small raft shaped patch of black primer in a veritable ocean of Sea Foam Green.  No biggie there.  I love the muted green color of this Buick.  After a number of beige and white LeSabres it’s distinctive.  Easy on the eyes.

And it has original equipment chrome wheels.  That’s not all good. During Illinois winters the salt corrodes the chrome finish near the bead of the tire and causes the tires to leak air.  My local independent garage guy has ground them down twice in the past three years after I report slow leaks.  This last time they reported an expansion of the problem.

“How were they this time?” I asked while writing the check.  Those guys really should charge more.

“About the same.  But the right rear rim has a tiny crack.  It’s not leaking air now, but it will.  They don’t get better you know.  Sooner or later you’ll have to replace that one at least.”

“How long you think?”

“Can’t tell.  I’d say maybe a year.  Depends on how hard you hit the potholes this winter.”

“Think I could find one to match the rest?”

“Yeah, you’re probably talking about a junk yard.  But they're out there.  More all the time.”

“That sounds good.”

I had asked them to put their computer on the check engine light that keeps coming on.  It used to be intermittent.  I always figured it was a loose gas cap.  Usually happened when the tank was almost empty.  But for the past month it hadn’t gone off at all.

“What did your machine tell you about my check engine light?”

“Two codes popped up.  Both had to do with transmission speed sensors.  I wrote the numbers down on your ticket.”

“Transmission?  I’ll be damned.”

That was both good and bad news.  When I back out of the driveway, get the Buick out on Caton Road, and drop it into drive I get this hesitation followed by a clunk.  Occasionally I’d feel a little slippage when it shifted.  But not always.  It bothered me some, but then the Buick had just turned over 150,000 miles.  I think we should cut old cars a little slack.  Same with old people.  But I worried that the transmission was crapping out, which is terminal for an old car with little value.  But if it was just sensors, maybe that tranny has more life.

“Can you replace those sensors?”

“We don’t do that work.  I’d suggest you go to the dealer.”

Car worries can eat at you.  I minimize them as much as possible.  My older brother, who is a good mechanic, used to worry about my attitude toward cars.  He was once riding with me in one of those beaters and heard a suspicious engine sound.

“You hear that?  That could be your tappets.  Maybe your lifters.”

I didn’t know what either of those were.

“You doin anything about that?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I turn up the radio.”

That was years ago.  As I matured, I learned to take car maintenance more seriously.  I plan to make more solo road trips in this green Buick and I want to take care of it.  The Lucerne is not a beater and I don’t want it to turn into one.

Besides, there is nothing worse than breaking down far from home and putting yourself at the mercy of unknown mechanics.  To say nothing of being stranded somewhere on the road without a car.  Although, if you were lucky enough to find yourself in a quirky community it could be interesting.

 

I called the service department of a local dealer.  The guy who answered the phone was snobby.  I asked what the cost would be of replacing those sensors and he wouldn’t let me finish reading him the code numbers. 

“It’s $140 to look at it and then we give you an estimate.  We don’t accept anyone else’s diagnosis.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

I took the information from my go to garage to a new place that just opened up.  Young guys.  My son had some work done there on his hybrid Ford and they did a good job.  They look everything up on their IPhones.  I started with one mechanic and another got interested.

They both studied their phones for a while, consulted each other quietly, and finally told me they didn’t want to work on it either.  They didn’t work on trannys enough to be comfortable with the job.

“I called the dealer and didn’t get very far.”

“I wouldn’t go either there if I were you.  There’s two places we take trannys to that do pretty good work.”

One was in Aurora and the other closer.  I went with the close one.  The young guy warned me about the place I chose.

“They do good work, but they have so much of it they don’t seem to care how they treat their customers.  So, if they get ornery with you try not to take it personal.  They may not, but then again they may get a wild hair and say something that pisses you off.  Just warning you of the possibility.”

“Are they expensive?”

“No.  That’s why people put up with them.”

The Buick and I found our way to their driveway which was crammed with vehicles.  There was a woman behind the counter, on the phone, arguing with someone.  She didn’t look up at me.  When she did, she looked perturbed.  I started to tell her the story of my transmission and the code numbers but she stopped me.

“I’m just behind the counter help.  Wait till I get you a mechanic.”

All the mechanic wanted to hear was the number of the codes and the year and make of the car.  He went to some greasy books under the counter and began flipping through one. 

“What’s the engine?”

“Six cylinder.  Three point eight liter.”

“Good engine.  Don’t know why GM stopped making it.”

Everybody says that.  He studied his book some more.

“I haven’t worked on one of those in a long time.  But seems to me GM put Caddy transmissions in some of those Lucernes.  If it’s a Caddy transmission, it’s too tight of a fit to get into the side panel and we have to drop the tranny.  “That’s… (he looked back at the book)... rated at 13 hours of labor.”

“How much is that?”

He gave me a scary number.  I gulped.  The end of my relationship with the green Lucerne flashed before my eyes.  I got a sinking feeling.

 That’s a lot of money to drop into a Buick that’s 14 years old.  How many miles?”

“150,000.”

“Yeah.  Up to you, but you might want to think that one over.”

“How you gonna know if it has a Caddy transmission?”

“I have to get it up on a rack and take a good look at how much room I have to work.”

“Can you do that now?”

“Don’t have a rack.”

“Do you charge for the estimate?”

“No.”

“When can you look then?”

“Best way is to bring it some morning you don’t need it.  Call first.  We’ll take a look, you leave it, and we fit you in.”

“In the same day?”

“Maybe.  If it works out.  Maybe not.”

“And if you can replace the sensors without dropping the tranny?  How much you think?”

“About half that.  No guarantee you know.  You ask us to replace the sensors we do it.  If that solves the problem great.  If not, we did what you wanted.”

“I know.”

Turned out they did replace those sensors without dropping the tranny.  The Buick feels better now when it shifts.  I think I’m past the crisis.  It was close.

 

Deciding the fate of a vehicle you treasure is a serious matter.  I don’t name my vehicles or talk about them as if they have feelings and desires, but I definitely have relationships with my cars.  I drove my Dad’s pickup for a while when I got back from Europe and was broke, but aside from that I paid cash for all my vehicles, and they have all been cars.

I bought my first car at 16, with money I made baling hay and shelling corn.  After I got married my wife and I made payments on our family vehicles, the little Ford station wagon, the Dodge vans, etc..  But I always had an old car for myself. 

There were times I didn’t have much cash and as a result I drove cars that weren’t very good.  They were beaters to begin with.  I got a job at DCFS that required a lot of travel and soon after that the car I was driving, a Chevy Impala with a lot of unpainted bondo on the side panels and very bad tires, blew a head gasket.

The guy that hired me for the job, Jim Tapen, sold me his Ford Torino.  It was a stick shift with a Cleveland 351 engine, dual exhaust, and bad rings.  It used a lot of oil.  He was disgusted at what the dealer wanted to give him for trade in and sold it to me cheap.  I later sold it to a client for $37.50, half what I paid for it, with the stipulation that if he sold it, he should charge the next buyer only half that, $18.75.  I doubt that car made it to another owner. 

I usually knew who owned each one of this string of Buicks I’ve been driving for 25 years because the guy I bought them from often sold them new or nearly new to their previous owner.  I hate buying cars.  I hate the haggle, the posturing, the salesman going to talk to his manager, the threat of walking away.  I prefer to buy cars like I buy groceries.  Pick them up and pay for them.

When I met Jerry Trost, he had already quit drinking and was a foster parent for our agency.  He always said exactly what was on his mind and thought a lot about his role raising someone else’s kids.  He and his wife took foster parenting seriously.  He thought about the natural parents and how they felt.  I like people that think about others, and I liked Jerry a whole lot.

I don’t know how many cars I bought from Jerry.  But when I thought I needed one I’d call him with an amount I wanted to spend.  Often, he would urge me to spend more but usually I stuck with my budget.  Sometimes weeks would go buy and then I’d get a call from Jerry with a car he recommended and I’d buy it.  It was a great arrangement. 

Once when he was working at a car lot in Streator, he found a 96 LeSabre for me during a time that I was very busy at the agency.  I told him I’d be down to look at it when I could. 

When I didn’t call him back after a few days he offered to have his son Jason, who was working with his Dad at the car lot then, bring it up to Ottawa for me.  Jason came up after 5:00, I was still at the office, and came out to look at it. 

I got in the driver’s seat and Jason sat beside me.  I checked the mileage.  Just over 100,000.  Perfect.  The price of a used car drops like a stone after 100,000 miles, and well-made cars like Buicks can be driven for much longer.

“Does it have the big V-6 Jason?”

“Yep.  Three point eight.  They’re bulletproof.”

“That’s what your Dad says.”

It was clean.  Looked like someone had taken good care of it.

“Does you Dad know the owner?”

“Yeah.  Just sold him a new Buick.  Sold him this one new too.”

“One owner then.”

“Yep.  Always changed the oil.  Takes good care of his cars.”

“You know I really wanted leather seats.  Or at least vinyl.”

It had cloth upholstery.

“Dad told me that.  He said to tell you not to be that picky with a car this good.”

I paused.  Started it.  Revved it up.  Shut it off.

“What do you think?”

“I’ll take it.  When can I get it?”

“You can have it right now.”

“Really? How you getting back to Streator?”

“Guy I know at the car lot here in Ottawa is going to give me a ride back.”

“Just like that?  You were pretty sure I was going to buy this car then.”

“Well that’s the way you and Dad do it right?”

“Yeah it is.”

“Dad says to come down to Streator in the next couple days.  He’s got the paperwork going now.”

“I’m going to Springfield day after tomorrow.  Is that soon enough?  I can come in early.  What time does he start?”

“He’s the first one there.  Just tell him when.”

“You want the check?”

“No.  Give it to him when you see him.”

Everyone should be as lucky as to have a friend like Jerry.  I called him with car questions, he called me with social work questions.  He sponsored many people in AA and tried to find help for them.  We commiserated about the effects of substance abuse on families.  We talked about our kids and his grand kids.  He saw humor in situations that weren’t always funny.  Social workers love people with that quality.  Social workers can’t get enough humor.  Jerry seemed to know that.

For a while before the recession my agency took donations of used cars and gave them to low income clients.  I took every car anyone wanted to give us and immediately called Jerry for an evaluation.  He decided if and how much we needed to repair those cars to make them safe for people to drive.  Then he would find the lowest repair price, often leaning on the mechanics for a favor, or explaining why they ought to give us a deal.  We paid very little to make those cars whole.

We gave his sister’s car to a single mother with a bunch of kids that worked fast food.  She lived on the South Side of Ottawa and used to walk across the bridge to her restaurant job on the North Side.  We would tell each other when we saw that car around town filled with her and her kids.  I gave away that 96 LeSabre while it still had some miles left to a woman who had gotten her kids back after drug treatment.  We felt good about that one.  Heck, we felt good about all of them.

Once in a while Jerry would look at a donated car, declare it a beater, and tell me he was going to junk it out or “make it go away” as he said.  I always took his advice.  Some people you trust implicitly.

Jerry died of a heart attack this summer.  He was alone on his motorcycle on a nice day headed to a delayed Father’s Day celebration/Grandpa visit at his daughter’s house. Got his Harley off on the shoulder, laid it down, then laid beside it and passed away. 

Turns out that green 2006 Lucerne with the bulletproof V-6 is the last Buick Jerry will ever sell me.  And I’m just not ready to give it up.