[V8] On buying Chevy's or GMC's or Audis in New England

[Roger M. Woodbury]

In a word, don't.  

The reason that I am searching in the used car ads and eBay continually, is
to find the "right" car or truck for my current fantasy.  The primary
requirement is that the car (or truck) have little or not history in New
England or for that matter, any other "rust belt" state, where winters are
apt to be long and where the Nazis in the local department of transportation
have religiously searched the world for the most caustic and corrosive
agents known to man to keep the roads clear of snow and ice in the winter.

Here in Maine, the secondary roads are apt to be pretty rough, and made much
worse as soon as the heating season comes along, because frost heaves change
the geography of every road and driveway within imagination.  Hence a truck
or car that has endured three or four winters in Maine will be apt to show
the wear characteristics of a vehicle that has been immersed in salt water
all its life.  

The Black Mariah is an excellent example.  The Black Mariah spent the first
hundred thousand miles living in a near suburb of Boston.  She went from
there to Vermont for about forty thousand miles, and then to Washington,
D.C. where I bought her.  She showed ALL the signs of having lived in the
rust belt, although the body isn't terribly corroded except where the left
front fender was replaced after an unfortunate meeting with a deer at around
30,000 miles.  But the body is looser than my old 5000CS Avant was, with
fifty thousand more miles, all of which were in southern Massachusetts.  And
I wouldn't buy one from there, either.

Now, my Chevy dually is pretty clean actually...from Oaklahoma, and my
wife's 100CS Avant had 39,000 miles on it when it came here from Kansas
City.  

Right now, I am thinking that if the Chebbie/Jimmy vehicle will come from
Texas.  There are a LOT of them there, and I need a vacation trip.

Roger

(Oh, and the V8?  It will be the one that seems to work out the best and has
the best records.  Don't hold your breath.)