Everyone has been courteous, prompt, professional, helpful, stuff you don’t automatically expect from your insurance company after an accident. I looked up consumer experiences after having a car totalled, and I braced for the worst. (Not GEICO-specific experiences for the most part, just general stuff, whatever I stumbled across.) To my untrained eye, the car was pretty messed up, and I was concerned that it was going to be repaired and not replaced. From what I read, you usually you don’t want your car totalled by the company because you’ll only get fair value for it, and fair value won’t replace the car. And “fair value” is pretty rough sometimes; at best, I was expecting low Blue Book value or something, again just based on what I read.

First, they did total the car; no games or anything. I mean, I saw it, and I’m not surprised, but I’m relieved that we won’t take on a vehicle that we wouldn’t have too much confidence in; as I mentioned, it’s pretty messed up. Second, the value they gave us for the car was almost double what my pessimistic, worst-case estimate had been. Still can’t replace the car without financing again, but it’s a real foothold and not some empty gesture. We’ll settle it on Monday, not even 2 weeks after the wreck. I have to admit that every time I see some kind of hospital scene on TV now, I think, “man, that really could have gone worse,” and that feeling now extends to how our insurance company has treated us.

What could have been a drawn out, bureaucratic nightmare has been so unexpectedly painless that I’m still waiting to wee what the catch is. I mean, maybe my premiums will double now or something and I’ll have a different feeling in 2 months, but so far, I couldn’t be happier with them or recommend them more highly. 

Got the jug of water back in the car and was really enjoying the late sunset light and the cooler air, probably down 12 degrees from the hot part of the day. Had a little music on, no cars immediately around me, and had the cruise control set for 75. (The legal speed limit here.) I wasn’t asleep or anything, but I could see the cars way in front and way behind me and was pretty relaxed. I was maybe 1/2 mile away from my exit – close enough to see it – when everything went nuts.

A deer came mashing toward me diagonally from the left, very fast, on a course that would put it right in front of my car. I crushed the brakes and started a slow turn to the right to get around it, thinking I’d just pass it and then be done. But it had enough of a lead that it kept getting more in front of me and I had to turn more and more right, and the net effect was turning sharply right and hitting my brakes very hard at 75 mph, never an ideal situation. I heard the car tap the deer, but they looked around for it later and didn’t see anything, so it may be OK, definitely better than it would have been if I’d hit it square-on at least.

I spun the car across the freeway, it flipped over and I skidded backwards and upside down up the median, a little hill.

The car stopped safely away from traffic, facing backwards and upside down. I didn’t feel any pain, so I unbuckled and squirmed out the window. I didn’t realize it, but when I dropped upside down into the broken glass from my former moonroof, it cut my scalp up a little. Nothing tragic, just a little raw later.

I heard a siren right away, and realized that I couldn’t see much; my glasses had come off during the roll. A policeman driving the other way had seen everything and drove over the median right away to come check things out. A couple drivers stopped to see if anyone in the car needed help but I was thankfully alone.

Lots of little things went on over the next 90 minutes. I felt as calm and collected as I ever do, but the paramedics said my heart rate and blood pressure were a little up. I was curious and asked how fast my heart rate was, and it was 110, down from 120. My resting rate is something like 70, so without me knowing it, my heart was beating as though I’d just been out for a long run. When Anette rushed to the scene, she forgot to bring me glasses, and I was adrenaline-alert and half blind. Since I wasn’t drinking and there were no drugs and no other cars involved, the police side of things was very simple, and all the rescue workers were very cool and helpful.

We went to take the rest of our stuff out of the car today, and the car looked less dramatic than it had the night before upside down and backwards on a hill, but it was still pretty messed up. The guy at the wrecking yard gave the car a double take and asked us who had been in it, you should have seen the look he gave when I said it had been me the night before. Only thing we can’t get out is the 6 CDs in the changer, the ignition wouldn’t work, not the biggest deal. (The AC and the stereo were still going last night after I’d stopped, so something else had happened later, maybe a short that drained the battery, or some kind of safety disabled thing.)

Inspecting the car, I saw that there had been an airbag built into my seat that had gone off behind my left shoulder, that’s where the stiffness came from. (Well, that and hanging upside down for a little bit probably.) I can’t believe I walked away from it. I feel very, very happy today, and very, very lucky. And very, very tired – the adrenaline in my body kept me from sleeping soundly, and it’s only now that I feel blessedly, safely tired. I’ll probably take a nap.

And the amp? Totally fine. As I mentioned at the beginning, while I was getting the water, I had said to Anette on the phone, “It’s in pristine shape; the ride home will put more scratches and dents on it than it’s had its whole life before.” When I’m right, I’m right.

I guess the water’s gone, too. $1.50 down the drain, and somehow I’m not concerned.

When I was a teen, the mini truck lowrider thing was big, and I had dreams of a little Toyota (with Toy on the tailgate?) lowrider, or maybe a Nissan Hardbody with a whopping 134 horsepower engine. They were actually fun and could even be used as trucks until they were dropped super low, and if I remember right, they got close to 30mpg with a manual. The Americans and the Japanese have moved away from real mini trucks, a Tacoma or Frontier from today are definitely a notch up, and while the Colorado from Chevy is about as close as anyone makes these days, they’re still a bit too big for their engines according to reviews, and I’ve read things like “don’t place too much weight across the top of the bed, like in a toolbox, because it collapses the bed.” Anything on the internet can be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s definitely affected how I look at them. I remember when I could have bought a brand new Isuzu pickup in 88 or 89 for like $7,500. No A/C, no power windows, maybe a radio, and it’s pretty hard to find something like that these days. (They’re theoretically available from all the expected manufacturers, but just try to find a stripped Tacoma on a lot somewhere.)

This Mahindra, which is expected to be manufactured in Ohio to avoid the dreaded Chicken Tax, is not an automatic buy for me, it would be an expected $22,000 for a small, not-luxurious work vehicle, manufactured in the US by an unknown (to me) manufacturer, etc. But I’m interested. And a diesel hybrid could get 60 or 70 mpg in a small vehicle like this, that would be hard to overlook when I’m comparison shopping. General Motors continues to say that hybrids are too expensive to manufacture and that the public isn’t interested; granted, people buy pickups and Suburbans even with rapidly rising prices. But Toyota can’t keep the Prius in stock. It could be a Japanese thing, like Sony did with the Playstation III and Nintindo did with the WII at Christmas – just hint that there might not be enough to go around, and watch people pound your door down.

The big manufacturers aren’t really listening to their customers; if you told the local coffee shop that they should start to sell Red Bull, they’d say, “No, people don’t want Red Bull, they only ask for coffee when they come in here, so that proves there’s no demand for Red Bull.” People buying what you happen to sell doesn’t mean that you’ve perfectly met their needs. There’s something to be said for sticking to what you know, and more companies ought to, actually, but fuel-efficient cars and trucks can be sold, right here, right now. Car companies are like the record industry these days – they don’t want a broad product range that addresses many different customers’ needs, they want to repackage two or three vehicles into 10 different cars and hope for one breakout, superstar success. A moderate seller isn’t worth keeping on the roster.

That leaves the niches wide open. A small, independent company will not come up with the next Civic. But they could come up with the next Jeep, something that started out very simple and purpose-built. And a smaller, independent company will definitely come up with the next EV1. I don’t blame the big guys for being profit focused, but whenever I hear things that hint that “market forces” steer them just fine, I have to laugh. If Dodge sells big pickups, big SUVs, big Jeeps, and big minivans, that’s what people will buy from them. If that’s not what I want, and that’s all that they have, I can’t exactly help them steer their product lines to meet my needs. “Hi, consumer! We’re here to give you anything you want! Huge? Poorly built? How about an extended warranty? Can we tempt you with something gas guzzling? Empty promises of reliability? Whatever you want, anything!” The big guys may be right – maybe not a single person in the US wants an electric car, for example. The best proof they have is that nobody’s buying them right now, though, so it’s a little silly. Know why more people don’t buy beer at McDonalds in the US? THEY DON’T SELL IT.

That being said, I don’t envy the big automakers. If they take a chance on something different, smaller for example, the media complains “it’s too small.” If they make it bigger, the reviews all say, “it’s OK, but it’s too bad it had to get so much bigger.” I remember when every Saab review ended with a complaint about the weird-looking hatchback and the position of the ignition switch. So Saab did some cars without the weird-looking hatchbacks, and suddenly all the reviews said, “It’s an OK car, but I sure miss that quirky Saab look that came with the hatchback – boy was that practical.” Can’t win. That partly comes from the superstar mentality; every car and truck from the big automakers needs to be loved in every way by everyone everywhere. A little company could thrive on selling 2,000 vehicles, even less, and maybe we’ll see some competition. Between 1900 and 1908, there were almost 500 car manufacturers – how cool would it be if we had smaller, regional companies that made vehicles that their local customers wanted? Alaskans probably need different cars than New Yorkers. Someone in Nebraska could have a vehicle that suited them and so could someone who lived in Gulf Coast Florida or Baja California.

If I was smarter, richer, better educated, more skillful, and more motivated (a totally different person, basically) I’d have to seriously consider taking a stab at it myself. It’s hard to believe that all entrepreneurial activity should be strictly in the realm of MySpace clones and internet advertising.

It’s pretty hard to believe; supposedly here in this opportunistic and capitalist environment, not a single entrepreneur has pounced on that fear that many Americans have had since 2001 and created even a niche product for us conspiracy enthusiasts. Lots of people figured that any tampering we do in the middle East, right or wrong, will somehow wreak havoc with gas prices, and here we are 7 years later, and the Prius is the best anyone can do? I mean the Prius is OK, but hybrids seem needlessly complex, and the supply-and-demand games Toyota plays with them means that you’re not only paying a premium for the technology and complexity, but in many markets you’ll even have to pay a premium over MSRP to get one.

This might be changing. I read a couple cool articles lately that sound really hopeful. I like the Tesla Motors concept and everything, but a $90,000 car is probably not going to solve our fuel dependencies overnight, if real people can’t buy it and use it like a real car, it’s not going to be anything more than an expensive badge for conspicuous non-consumption like the EV1 used to be.

One of the companies is Aptera. They have a Jetsons-looking 2.5 seater that will be available this year in California as either a plug-in electric or a plug-in hybrid. It’s a little knotty to calculate the gas efficiency of a car that can run in all-electric mode, but their best guess is in the 120mpg range. The vehicle itself is a 2 seater with a smaller rear shelf that could hold a baby seat or a toddler, and the trunk seems pretty capacious from the pictures. (2 bags of golf clubs or even a single 7-foot surfboard is a pretty impressive point of reference.) The car will start in the mid $20s and top out at an estimated $30k. Not dirt-cheap, but not a terrible price of entry for something that looks totally new. (No other commercially available electric vehicles yet; until one really hits the streets, the title’s up for grabs.) And the anti-Prius argument that “you can’t hardly drive enough to make up for the added expense” is a little harder to prove here.

To just complain for a second, this also embodies a couple peeves of mine. First, why would anyone be anti-fuel efficiency? I don’t mean complaining about being forced to drive a hybrid or import or small car or something – that hasn’t actually happened – I mean the hysterical, angry reaction that some people have to the very existence of an economical car. And second, people buy boat-hauling SUVs without owning boats, and they buy 4-wheel-drives without ever going anywhere but Starbucks and soccer games – that’s all fine for them and nobody can say anything because it’s their right and their destiny, but then if someone wants to put their money into extra efficiency rather than extra and unused power or features, somehow that is flawed thinking if it doesn’t generate a gigantic and instant return on their investment?

Anyway… The other one was a little far-fetched, but the people involved seem impressive and credible. It’s an air-powered car. To refill it, an compressor mashes air into a tank for a couple hours into pretty dangerous densities, and the air is then used to power an onboard generator. 1,000 mile range, 2-hour refills, and a top speed close to 100mpg all make it sound pretty usable. 6 passengers and a starting price of a little over $17k make it sound almost unreal. 0 emissions, too. The American distributor-to-be is in New Paltz, NY, but the mothership is based in France. Due in 2009, we’ll see. There have been a lot of vaporware vehicles like this, but with an engineering team with pedigrees from Bugatti and Formula 1 racing, this could be one to watch. The NY Daily News story is pretty cool.

The dealership hasn’t done a single thing right in the process, from just doing the work correctly, to basic customer service like returning phone calls or finishing work when promised – ever, to leaving the car a greasy mess inside, to never returning phone calls, to pretty basic politeness during phone calls. (To be fair, Zeke – probably not his real name – The Assistant Service Manager Guy was reasonably polite.) I swear that we were on a reality TV show called “treat your customers like shit” or something. And told us that Chrysler had said to him, “We don’t know what else to tell you, let us know when you figure it out.” So the incompetent corporate mothership abandoned the incompetent locals to figure it out for themselves.

At the end of the day, it’s not exactly an awful truck, it was just a faulty alternator – a faulty alternator at 4,000 miles or so requiring 5 months of downtime and repeated incorrect changes that wrecked my truck’s interior? I hate and distrust it now, but that would happen with any vehicle that let me down so often and so hugely so early in its life.

And sure, the dealership’s service department sucks – 5 months to diagnose and repair an alternator? Why waste a chance to take a simple situation and use it to turn a customer into a lifelong enemy?

But at the end of the day, the fault is mine. It’s the Mullicious Family Curse. Every 40 years or so, someone from my family exhibits the blind and dumb optimism necessary to forget Chrysler’s past letdowns and goes out and buys a Dodge. Its failures are so epic and the dealer’s service followup so tragic that nobody we know, family or not, will buy another Chrysler product for decades. It was my destiny, almost 40 years since my dear not-departed mother’s brand new Dart was traded in for a Chevy pickup that was more reliable at 30 years of age than my nearly infant Ram. Now, our family has a new dark legend to keep the young ones safe again for another 40 years, and the part I played was bigger than my own life. I hope it skips a generation, but we always want what’s best for our offspring.

I’m like Icarus or something, I just flew a little too close to the sun. I dared to hope for an affordable and reliable American pickup to fill my family’s transportation needs, and I was simply wrong. Nothing more to it. This isn’t a story of failure, it’s really just a story of a boy who never learned not to dream.

(Don’t ask about the Lemon Law, either. Too many lessons for one post… And I’m intentionally not naming the dealership for fear of them doing even worse things to my truck when it needs service, the nearest alternative is 70 miles away.)

Note: As of winter 2010/2011, everything on the truck appears to be working basically correctly at the same time! It only took four years to work out the kinks on our vehicle. God help us if they need to change the mud flaps or something – we’re out of warranty and it’ll probably cost me $60,000.

It’s been in the shop since early December, we’ve had it back for a week or so sometime since then, and it has electrical woes that cannot be fixed. The dealership doesn’t really care, and from all appearances, neither does Dodge. I’ve heard all the outrage from friends and family. “But it’s still new! It’s under warranty!” True. But here we are. “Just make them give you a new one!” Great idea, fantastic. Only 2 problems: first, easier said than done, and second, no thanks – if you get a cup of chowder with a finger in it, you just send the chowder back and you’re probably over chowder for a while. I mean, if I get a call and they offer to somehow make things right, I’ll jump on anything they offer at this point, but I’ll have to wait until the monkeys stop flying out of my ass and until the flock of pigs flying by clears out to make the drive into town. 

“But what about the Lemon Law?” you ask. Well, this has been a time of learning and growth; part of what I’ve found is that new car buyers in America are basically powerless. Yes, there’s a thing called the “Lemon Law” in most states, and yes, the idea is that it protects you from uncaring manufacturers and incompetent local dealer service, but it’s not exactly like ordering a pizza. At the end of the day, it’s nearly impossible to make a dealer or a manufacturer do anything at all, ever. That’s not to say that some dealers or manufacturers will not go the extra mile from time to time, “do the right thing” as it were. But after 4 months of nothing, I’m not holding my breath in my own case. And anyway, Lemon Law goes through the state you bought the car in, not the state you live in, so if I lost a Colorado Lemon Law case, even on the most asinine technicality, I’d be responsible for the legal fees Dodge/Chrysler had incurred. I’d be stuck with a bill, potentially in the thousands, in addition to an unsellable, unsafe, unfixable vehicle with barely a year of use and not even 5,000 miles. Your best bet is to just not buy a lemon to begin with, easier said than done. 

I have no choice but to stick with the process until the car gets fixed. I can’t make them go any faster than they choose to go or to, well, to actually care in any way; they don’t, and I can’t make them. I cannot and I do not have to tell people not to purchase Dodge products or warn anyone about the dealership; they just see what we’re going through and draw their own inevitable conclusion. It didn’t have to be this way, but here we are.

On the other hand, I bought a hot tub a little over a year ago. A Softub, designed in America and built in America. After about a year of solid service, it started acting up last fall, and we’ve been back and forth with our dealership in Albuquerque. Yes, it’s been a little frustrating that it broke, and yes, it’s a little frustrating that each trip to the dealer involves a 70 mile drive each way. But the dealer has been amazing, constantly above and beyond, wouldn’t give up and wouldn’t let us give up. (And the timeline is artificially long; it’s dragged out because we’ve been very slow about making the trip down there and back.) On Friday, I got a call from him and he uttered those 3 little words I’ve been dying to hear from Dodge – “I found it.” Long story short, he finally tracked down the problem, which was rare and difficult to find as a result. He’s been helpful every step of the way, returns phone calls, and wouldn’t stop until he was confident that we’d been helped, and apologized repeatedly (and needlessly) about the inconvenience. Just the opposite of my Dodge experience. So I’m confident that the hot tub is fixed now, I’m still confident in the brand, and I still feel good about my purchase. I’d recommend the product and this particular dealership without hesitation.

Problems happen, and how a company helps you with them is even more important than the fact that something happened to begin with. A lot of people are down on American cars and I’m starting to understand how they end up that way, but it’s great to know that there are some versions of the “buy American” thing that still work out well, like with our hot tub. It’s been nice to have these 2 lessons side by side so I don’t ease into that pessimistic attitude of “Americans just don’t make things like they used to” or some variation on that theme. When we’re given even the tiniest chance, we make great products and provide great service and maintain great relationships; I just hope the Big 3 can see this for themselves and turn things around. They’ll have my emotional support and my good wishes, but for now, my monetary support will have to go elsewhere.