11Feb05 (Monthenor): Look upon my wheels, ye mighty, and despair!

After a week of slowly breaking it in, my only complaints have to do with the state of the trunk and hood. I was almost afraid to look in the trunk...the car was priced at near-wholesale, and the trunk's capacity for holding human remains seemed a likely cause. I checked it out on Tuesday night. Empty. The car's thesaurus suggests the word cavernous.

Unfortunately this particular evening happened to be about 5 below zero. The trunk's auto-close motor stubbornly refused to engage, and I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to convince it to take hold. It isn't "progress" if a digital component fails and there's no mechanical component to back it up.

Fast forward to today. I noticed the engine temp was rather low when first starting up, so I popped the hood to fill antifreeze. I then tried to close the hood...the first latch engaged, but the main latch did not. This one took me thirty minutes to solve, but with liberal use of WD-40 and some black magic I managed to convince both latches and their attendant springs that, yes, they did serve me.

I'm seriously considering shelling out for vanity plates. They cost next to nothing in North Dakota anyway. Should I go with GMECHS, MONTG, or VOLTRON?