Enotes

The recall of a car seems to be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of proposition. General Motors is recalling cars almost as fast as they're making them, but what is worse---recalling cars or ignoring the problem? If anyone knows both sides of that sword, it's GM. Nearly 14 million GM cars have been recalled in 2014, and the year isn't half over. The latest mulligan for General Motors is the Chevy Aveo, which the other day became the 30th GM vehicle to be recalled in 2014. The 218,000 subcompact Aveos brought the grand total of recalled GM cars to 13.8 million. The latest recall involves Aveos in model years between 2004 and 2008. The daytime running light module in the dashboard center stack can overheat, melt and catch fire. Of course, nothing is worse than a recall born out of deaths, and GM knows all about that, too---with its infamous ignition switch debacle from earlier this year that is responsible for at least 13 deaths (accord...

Our daughter just turned 21. And, parked in front of our house as I write this, is the car in which we drove her home. I remember strapping her tiny, 4-lb. body into her car seat and securing her in the Mustang's back seat that day in June, 1993 in front of Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak. She was born two months premature, and thus weighed just 2-lb, 14-oz. when she was born via emergency C-section. The Mustang was purchased in September, 1992, just before my bride and I were betrothed. Little did we know that some 21-plus years and 115,000 miles later, we'd still own the car. But that's OK. It's been a good car. How could it not be, if it's old enough to legally drink alcohol? It's starting to come apart at the seams now, which is to be expected. Rust is spreading like cancer. But the Mustang still runs and it gets me front Point A to Point B. We just make sure that the distance between those two points isn't too far. We have a 2003 Mercury Sable ...