Getting Life - and budget - in Focus

This picture is not ours, it's from a member of FocusFanatics.com. Ours (Chan's, that is) is this same color (minus the front end carnage): Grabber Green Metallic Clear, and apparently it's a fairly rare color option. The 2.0L is economical, getting 25 mpg city and 34 highway! It's also peppy, especially once it gets up over about 4k rpm. Interestingly the tach goes to 7k rpm, but there's no redline; I'm guessing the engine computer has a built-in rev limiter? Do all cars have these now? They should... (as long as they are reconfigurable, of course). I'd like to put an MSD 6AL capacitive discharge on the Cougar; the important feature is a swappable rev-limiting "chip". Nice for running hard (you don't destroy things as easily), but the 3k rpm limit chip is essential for valet parking, shipping, or other situations where the vehicle and keys are turned over.

So yeah, for the first time in my life, all of the vehicles in my household are American made. The 1999 Toyota 4Runner is on its way to a used car auction. She was great for a long time; other than the Cougar, I've never owned a car longer than her. We put 67000 miles on her in 3 years and 11 months; roughly 47 miles per day over that time period. When you put it that way, it really seems like a lot.

A lesson we learned: if you're going to sell a car for more than about $2000, you want to make sure that the mileage is below 100k miles, preferable below 80k miles. You see, most banking institutions won't issue a car loan on a vehicle with too many miles; some also have restrictions on age (i.e. 3 years old, 5 years old, etc). Just something to think about and keep track of, as you probably want to make sure you are no longer upside-down before you reach these selling points.

SO, that said, my daily driver is now the '93 Wrangler S... S means completely Stripped down. I love it; I've got a stereo (that we installed) and a heater for the brutally cold NM winter mornings, and two front seats (no rears). Currently the Jeep has 91k miles, but we have no plans to sell this beast. At some point (probably another 50k miles from now) down the road, the 2.5L 4cyl will get tired and I'll do a 85-or-later Ford 5.0L v8 swap. Strangely enough, the gas mileage shouldn't change much! In the meantime, I've gotta get the Cougar running.