[Jeff Higgins]

"Our" first "family car" when we got married - a Mercury Lynx (Ford Escort) station wagon. Thank God we bought the extended warranty... I think my wife put more miles on "free loaners" in the years we owned that car than she ever put on it. What was very maddening about the whole ordeal was that she often had our first baby, then later our second baby and now toddler in the car with her when it broke down. We were a young couple, with her pausing her nursing career to stay home with the kids, so really wanted to pay it off before getting rid of it. We never made it that far with that thing and took quite a loss on it. Washington enacted a pretty robust "lemon law" shortly after that, under which we would have had no trouble making the dealer take it back, had it been in affect.