Hooptie Do

For the last couple of years my daughter has been driving a “Hand Me Down” Mazda SUV with about a quarter of a million miles that she bought from her brother. It leaks oil and water and constantly has to be filled every time she goes anywhere. The air conditioner is broken and so is the heater. I looked up the term “hooptie” to see if her car meets the qualifications to be a true hooptie in the online Urban Dictionary. Here is what I found:

Hooptie

“Any car that meets the following: a) driver must enter car through passenger side b) three different brand and size tires - 3 of them missing hubcap c) exhaust is held up by half a clothes hanger - other half replaces the antenna d) backfires every three blocks - loudest backfire being when car is turned off e) must open door at drive-thrus as windows doesn’t roll down f) you only get one AM station and the tape deck eats all tapes inserted g) can’t open the glove box as the whole thing will fall out h) if you let go of steering wheel while driving you’ll make a u-turn i) must manually move blinker lever up and down as it no longer blinks on it’s own j) must keep one foot on brake and one on accelerator when at a complete stop k) has had the same temporary registration sticker in the window for the last 18 months l) has all the above issues but still has a $200 professional tint job.”

So I guess her car might not quite meet the minimum standard to be a true hooptie, expecially since it has current registration and an inspection sticker and no “check engine” lights on. Still it’s a pretty bad car and has been the cause of more than one bad night’s sleep for me worrying about her.

Earlier this year we lost Lori’s mom. She loved her grandkids and left them some money. My daughter got just enough to buy a reliable used car. So this weekend I embarked with her on an adventure to find a used vehicle. So with our cell phones we scoured car buying apps, Facebook Marketplace and Craig’s List to find a car that she loved.

All I can say is: “THANK GOODNESS FOR CARFAX”. Time and again we would find a car that she loved only to find that the seller had lied about it having been wrecked or flooded. Most of the time when we told them we were going to run a CarFax report they would come clean that the car had a salvage title. Some stuck with the lie until we paid for a report and showed it to them. One guy that was selling a Volvo SUV with about 111,000 miles was genuinely shocked when we showed him the Carfax report. He said that he had bought the car in March and was given a regular title not a salvage title. A half an hour later he asked if I would send him a copy of the CarFax report so he could confront the guy who sold him the car last March. I promptly sent him a copy.

Obviously hurricanes and floods in the last few years have caused a lot of cars to have salvage titles. After Church on Sunday afternoon we looked for the better part of the day and finally in Lewisville she found a car, in her budget, that passed the CarFax test. She fell in love with a Pearl White Nissan Rogue. She even negotiated the price down substantially. I was pretty proud of her bartering skills. If I ever have to buy a used car it will be too soon. If we do, our motto will be: In God we trust, but anything you tell us will be checked with CarFax.