Sharing good things…

[Blackhorse]

My wife’s drive was a 2016 KIA SOUL with 90K miles on it until a few weeks ago when it died heading North to visit her ailing sister. AAA towed her 70 miles home. It would still putter around but we couldn’t trust it. We had it looked at…new Catalytic Converter…got quoted $4500 total repairs. Not safe to drive. Could blow at any moment. Whatever. Anyway, spent yesterday morning buying my wife a new one…2023 SOUL. It was her birthday. And it was exactly 7 years since we bought the 2016…on her birthday.

Classic…the old one had a brand new $$700 set of Continental tires on it. Arrrgghh! But I negotiated that they go on the new one. Nice.

Sometimes things that seem like a disaster work out OK. Grace.

 

[Idlefellow]

Nice! My daughter just traded off her 2011 Soul with 146K on it. Still going great. It was a great car.

 

[Blackhorse]

I got to say this is pretty cool. The new car has one tech package on it in addition to base. Among its various talents, it can keep you within the lines painted on the left and right of each lane. It feels very strange, but it works well. It will also warn you if you’re backing up and another vehicle is crossing in back of you, I did that the other day in a parking lot. OMG! The resulting super loud noise half scared me to death. But it prevented being t-boned by a garbage truck. It’ll also give you a warning and flashing lights if you try to change lanes and there’s somebody hiding back there in a blind spot. So far while driving the stay in the middle of the road thing is the most noticeable because it’s always on, the rear crossing warning has only come on once thank goodness and the Blindspot warning has come on once for me too. The last techie thing it does is turn off the engine when you come to a stop like at a traffic light or at a freeway offramp or whatever then when you take your foot off the break, the engine starts right up again and you take off. I think that has something to do with emissions, more than saving gas, but overtime it would work for both. That was on our 2016 soul as well and you get to like it. At this point, it’s getting just under 35 mpg which is five more than it’s really supposed to on paper. And that’s city plus highway. Fine with me.

The car we traded in had a brand new set of continental super tires. I really hated to give those up and mentioned it in the dealer. Let me trade my tires onto the new car. so far so good first really brand new car I bought in probably 30 years. Kind of fun.

 

[Blackhorse]

As Paul Harvey would say, and this is the rest of the story.

I took the Kia soul in for its first major service today. I was greeted in the service department by four or five of the guys shouting and clapping as I walked in…calling me by name when I had no clue what was going on. It was a little scary. The head of the service department congratulated me and said that they had been waiting for me for several months because they wanted to all shake my hand. I’m laughing here. I could not imagine what was going on, but they told me that I was famous at the dealership without knowing it. The Kia that we had traded in and gotten something like $5200 in trade for was sold in about a week and a half by the dealership to a customer - about an 18-year-old girl who just loved it. Three days later, the car blew up. And I mean blew up. The engine seized there was smoke everywhere the catalytic converter melted or something it was a horrific scene and to make a long story shorter by just a bit the dealership ended up by having to put a new engine in it for her. I’m still laughing here. There can’t be anything better than luck, and we apparently have it in spades. We told the dealership all the problems at the car had, and that we had been warned not to drive it and yet they sold it to an unsuspecting customer and it blew up on her. Oh my, that’s rich. -