faboo mama

The other day, when they got home, Ilia jumps out of the car, “Daddy hit something!”. Daddy said, “I just knocked the side-view. You know how loud that is.” Ilia kept saying, “We need a new car.” (For the record, she wants an SUV because she says we need more room. Who’s kid is this?)

We kept telling her to be quiet, so she loudly announced, “I’m going to look at it.” Daddy said, “There’s nothing to look at. I just knocked the window.” Screeches and Ilia said, “It’s BROKEN! We need a new car!!!” Daddy walked over to look and quickly stiffened. “Oh my…fu…sh…Dang.”

I walked over to see what the problem was. OMG. That’s not just knocking the side view! What the hell did he hit? I’m still unclear, Faboo Papa doesn’t take blame easily, so I got a lot of how it wasn’t his fault, but unclear as to what he hit exactly. That was Saturday. On Sunday, I had to shoot a site in Glendale. I drove there with the dangling side-view. Dangerous. Fast as I drive? And considering the car has a major blind spot on that entire side, even with an operable side-view, it was hair-raising on the freeway. I got back home after a few hours had to go back out. Needless to say, the side-view was still dangling, so I (you know the person not in the car at the time) had to get some duct tape and “fix” the side-view.

Monday and Tuesday came an went like we had a completely intact car. Pffft. I (you know the person not in the car at the time) took the car to the body shop to get an estimate. Found out that I can get an new paint job for $1100 too. I just may get my baby blue MINI Cooper.

I almost feel for the US automotive industry. I equate their leadership and marginalization to Black people in America today. Yay you! You did something great 40 years ago, but what about today? Are you going to keep moving forward or will you rest on your laurels for another 40 years?

You have your lobbyist in Washington and you get to write legislation. You own Congresspeople. Everything you do is to benefit you. You do nothing to help the American public. Naturally, it’s hard for me to care when Michigan Republicans get pissy because the new energy bill was delivered in a Prius.

The 2008 Chevy Tahoe hybrid was named Green Car of the Year. And you’re telling me that not one Congress critter, aide or Chevy representative thought of using the car? When I read yesterday that a hybrid was going to deliver the bill, I assumed it would be the Chevy. How did all you people who make the big bucks fall down on the job? Sorry, you can get pissy at Toyota, you can be mad at Pelosi, you can whine about it being a slap in the face, but this was on you Michigan.

This bitch needs to have her licensed revoked.

Red headed chick, driving a yellow Saturn with Wisconsin plates around noon today on the 10 Freeway West…You suck.

You almost caused 8 accidents in the 10 minutes I shared the road with you. The tailgating made you looked like a bigger idiot than the lane jumping did.

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Mazda Super Spy car, originally uploaded by fabooj.

And no comments.

Last night, I was flipping through my flickr photos and noticed that a picture of a Chevy got like 176 views, going up to 206 views 10 min. later. Someone must have linked to my photo. This pic at the time, had 87 views.

I was looking at the photos again right now and noticed that this photo had 1,232 views (it went up, when I decided to blog it).

Volvo had some pretty interesting concept cars. This car was pretty neat:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_8-0Xau52c&rel=1]

The funniest thing about this car was the reactions of the 4 - 12 year old crowd. The double takes and the agape mouths were pure comedy.

It’s an ‘02. We bought it two weeks after it was released. That was stupid, but we needed a car and couldn’t wait until June for the limited edition GTI to come out. To explain why my car sucks, you’ll have to visit my flickr page to see the notes on the photo.

I hate this car. I mean, I like driving it, “in theory”. In reality, the car is a POS and Assael MINI dealership has been nothing but shitty in addressing and “fixing” the problems. Everything up there that’s been replaced was replaced while the car was under warranty. Except for the electrical. That they said that they “couldn’t find the problem” even though, when we’d drive away, it would be there. I’m talking, the gas gauge reads wrong, the mpg reading has said 3.7 for 4 years, the lights in and around the car will just come on when they want and sometimes stay on for days. The radio will just change stations or turn off when it wants to, especially if the heater or A/C is running.

And today, we just replaced our 4th battery.

As I mentioned earlier today, the car wouldn’t start. What was frustrating was that the car unlocked fine and the radio and lights would come on, but there was no power. We took the battery to AutoZone and of course, they said it wouldn’t take a charge and we had to buy another. Now, this is the 4th battery we’ve had in this car. Our last battery install was in March ‘06. The one before that was in Nov. ‘04. Just to give you an idea of how incredibly shitty the BMW-made MINI batteries are.

What makes it all so incredibly frustrating was posting to MINI forums where we all had the same problems and hearing people talking about how great their dealerships were in fixing the problems and we were stuck is the idiotstick fucks at Assael, not working on our car. I had nothing but problems with Assael MINI. Okay, here’s how shitty Assael is: I took my car in last year for whatever the issue of the day was. I had wanted them to fix the electrical and was willing to pay for it. The moron (his name was Chris) I got to deal with that day, kept telling me my car wasn’t under warranty, which I knew. Then I said, “Look, I’ve been trying to get this stuff fixed since Nov. ‘02.” He said, “No, you brought this in in Jan. ‘05. The problem was due to flooding.” I’m like, “No way man, that problem was around way before the flooding.” He wouldn’t budge because his damn computer only kept files for a year and that’s all he had. I’m sitting there with ALL the paperwork, receipts and such from before and he wouldn’t look at them. The manager, Jerry, knew that I had been in there with the same issue before and wouldn’t even speak to me about it, pretending that he couldn’t get the files.

I spent way too much time at Assael. Let’s put it another way: These people knew me before I had kids AND watched them grow up. When the customer service rep can talk to your child about how he remembers when was a baby, something’s fucking wrong! Between Nov. ‘02 and April ‘04, I spent 10 of those months in rental cars. Rental cars, that I had to pay for because the BMW loaner car program is only extended to BMW owners. MINI owners get the shaft in customer service. Unless you happen to buy from a dealership that likes their customers like Long Beach MINI. Apparently, they treat you like royalty down there. LOL!.

I wrote letters and all that good stuff, but neither MINI USA or BMW cared to try to fix the situation. Live and learn, right? I’m never going to buy another MINI, no matter how incredibly cute the ‘08 look. No matter that they have useful cup holders and visors that actually block something. Nope. Not gonna do it. Unless I can get one from Long Beach MINI.