Bad car kharma part 2

We are at Lake Arrowhead at the moment, in a rental car, for my office retreat. Since it's work related, my boss is paying for the rental car, how cool is that?! And it is much more "play" than work. At this second, Ryan's reading, I'm typing, and Lauren is napping. We're in a little cabin in the mountains. But back to the reason we need a rental car. On Thursday afternoon I was driving the BMW to work and again a hose popped off and sprayed coolant. I pulled over and Ryan came in the Ford to get me (keep in mind, that car has a blown head gasket and is only supposed to go 5 miles or less. We live 4 miles from my office.) . He drove me to work and then my dad picked me up and drove me to the car. He determined that a clip on the hose was broken, probably from when they recently put in a new radiator. The hose had hit the fan and broken some blades. It was okay to drive to the mechanic's but slowly and cautiously. So we dropped it off there.

This morning the mechanic told us the problem has to do with the reservoir, not the radiator, and that it was not his fault, it was a different broken part. Dad says he should have looked at that part when he put on the radiator. So maybe it is his fault, I'm not sure? Either way, it's time for us to get serious about getting another car.

I'm not one of those people who locates their sense of self worth in their car (I do it in shoes. Just kidding!) but I do like to have certain features. And they're not what most people even rank. Nice rims and custom paint job would be completely lost on me. I like my BMW because it has these features: able to accelerate fast, good stereo, tight wheel radius and good steering for easy parking, and back seats fold down for access to the trunk. Also it's safe and gets pretty good mileage (~24 mpg). It's been my experience that BMWs are pretty reliable cars. It's been my experience that Fords break down. I've only owned a few cars in my lifetime which have mostly been older BMWs that I put tons of miles on and just drove until they were eventually crashed into (last year) or my brother drove into a boulder (and walked away with only minor scratches, another selling point for the car) or eventually required some major repair that wasn't cost effective, but after YEARS of good performance. Anyway, so you get from this which manufacturer I'm leaning towards.

I also had a Honda Civic once, which was okay but felt designed for someone smaller. I don't know how else to explain it, it just felt like it was meant for a little short person, the way the seats and buttons were designed. It also did not have much pep. But the back seats folded down! :)

Anyway, we're renting a Ford Focus. It's okay. Not as bad as Geo Metro's I've previously rented. But hey, it STARTS and it RUNS which is great in my book.