I have met several people who also owned 2002 tii cars, and all of them say that they wish they had never sold their car. I liked it a lot, but it was time for a bigger family car. I bought a used Mercedes 300SD. This was a very comfortable
four door sedan with a five cylinder turbo charged diesel engine. It was not particularly quick, but it got very good mileage and was quite comfortable.
We suffered an unfortunate incident in the SD. It was the first car we ever owned
that had a sun roof. One clear night Gale and I were returning from San Francisco, driving on 280 past Crystal Springs Golf Course. Gale opened the sun roof and was marveling at the stars. I took a look up, and when I looked back to the road
there was a deer right in front of us. I swerved, but hit it with the right front of the car. Net result was car 1, deer 0. But it did break the right headlight cluster, dented the fender and the right hand door. Lesson –
watch the road, especially at night in deer country.
We were into skiing at this time, and one thing the diesel was not is a good ski car. Several times after being left outside in a snow storm it would not start and I had to have it towed to
a garage where heaters were put under the car to warm it up enough to allow the fuel to flow. So we bought a jeep.
The 1989 Jeep Cherokee was a very good ski car and is well enough known that I don’t
think I need to describe it. One of our sons, Jeff landed a job as a ski patrol at North Star in the Tahoe area. He used it that winter and it performed well, although I never got a satisfactory explanation of how he managed to break a transmission
mount.