I refused to accept the advice of my favorite (and uncharacteristically honest) mechanic friend to trade it in for a new, less expensive, lower maintenance car. Believing I needed a Volvo specialist to save it, I brought it to the Volvo dealer for a second opinion. Big mistake. Hundreds of dollars and a suspiciously broken dipstick later the bangs and clunks were still there.
Unable to accept the grim diagnosis about the faithful vehicle that transported me safely and comfortably each day, I brought my ailing automobile to yet a second Volvo dealer. Huge mistake. Here it was diagnosed as having a compromised breather box, injured tie rods, loose motor mounts, and a multitude of other problems. I was determined to rescue it from a slow death but thirteen hundred dollars later it was still banging and clunking so back again to dealer #2 who then proceeded to diagnose transmission trouble, the coup de grace of coupes. If I had been told at the onset that my car issues were due to transmission trouble I would have issued a do not resuscitate and taken the advice of my first (and favorite) mechanic friend. Now, with too much money invested, I have no choice but to hang onto my debilitated Swedish sedan.
With cars currently on my mind, I have noticed that Hubert has etched an occasional automobile into some of his scenes. I've been trying for quite some time to date Hubert (numerically, not romantically) but because only one of his etchings is titled with a date (1914-1918) it has been difficult to pinpoint his lifespan. Perhaps cars could be the key to placing Hubert in a specific time period establishing a chronology of his existence. Now, I just have to research thousands of cars to isolate the few that Hubert etched. I might be taking the slow lane but it's not how fast you drive, it's how you drive...
