Need car smart opinions, please

[seafox52]

Please bear with me with this sequence of events. My female chinese boss has a 98 Intrigue with 86,500 miles. It's driven to and from work only - 20 miles round trip. On 8/10/05, it was hit on the right front/side area and flattened the tire - resulting in repairs/labor totalling $3,177. The other driver was at fault and taken care of by her insurance.
They fixed the fender, headlamp, wheel, whl nut, tire, and a few things that have all letters i.e. MLDT-F/DC, R/SD, FWDO, MIR-OS/RV & TAPE-Q-PN. ???? They also did a 2WD alignment and tire/wheel balance. Nine days later, 8/19/05, the car was ready to pick up. After driving it a few days, she did not feel it was handling well and returned the car on 8/23/05. So far she only paid for $250 deductible.

The car is repaired again for a shorted low coolant sensor and they did a decarb/throttle body service (whatever that is), emission service and replaced PCV valve and filter. This was now at her cost of $442 that she thought would have been part of the original accident above. But she paid it. She was still not feeling like it felt completely right, but was told that she needed to get the feel of the new parts and everything was fine.

After driving it for 2 1/2 weeks, she is now driving to work on 9/14/05, when she looses steering at 45 mph, the wheel grabs and veers to the right and crashes into a brick wall. She could not turn the wheel in any other direction. She is not injured badly and police find some pieces on the ground and take back the ticket for negligent driving and decide it is mechanical failure. It goes back to the shop for repairs for the exact same area as in the first accident. They tell us that it was caused by the right front hub and bearing. The repaired areas and parts include the fender, tire, arm, rod kit, wheel kit, axle kit, rotor, rod kit, fascia, headlamp, brace, stem, hub kit and nut whl. I picked up the car today and drove it to her house during a heavy rain storm and could not get a good feel to its handling, but drove fine in my opinion.

We requested the insurance company to investigate the cause and deterimine if it was possible that the 2nd and 3rd repair and accident could have been caused by the first accident. Maybe something had been overlooked, maybe a stress fracture undetected.... this is where I would like your opinion. She has now had to pay another $250 deductible for the accident and her insurance company is paying for the balance of $4,522.

If it were you, would you question this as I am? What would you do? Do you feel it was just a coincidence that these other items broke down when they did? Or could they have been actually jarred or damaged without being noticed during the initial repair and was unfortunate that my boss had to experience this. She won't even sit in the car and is going to sell it. Bad feng shui. I look forward to your opinions. Susan in Winter Park, FL

[panzer dragoon]

Whenever you get into an accident with a car you need to think about taking it as a total loss.

A 1998 Intrigue is only worth about $5k or maybe $6k. So when you have $4,500 in damages you are getting very close to total value. The force of accidents can cause strange things to happen like bearing failures in engines and transmissions -often years later.

I would walk away from this car since you don't feel comfortable with it anymore. These unibody cars are like beercans, in that once they are crushed the metal has lost it's properties and feels/acts different.

Accept that it has been a good car for you and protected you in an accident and let it go.

Some people here may be shocked to hear me say this.

A worse case senario would be having a $50K car and having $30-40K worth of damage. I have seen Trucks and SUVs with extreme damage rebuilt, and I often wonder why?

This idea also holds true for chassis (framed) cars. My 75 Olds could never get re-aligned (front end)after the car hit a large piece (many pounds of scrap steel) of debris on the road and the right front tire got "rocked" (the damn car nearly exploded at the impact-at least it felt like that). The car drove away from it, but it was never the same. The 75 Olds is a tank compared to the Intrigue, but the Intrigue has less room for the tire to move which may be a good thing with an impact like this.

[Jimmy Olsen]

That's good advice. Trade it in on for the Buick that has the shortstar engine....very similar to the Intrigue. I certainly would not drive the car again given its history!

The second incident is most definitely related to the first accident and subsequent repair.