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I did finally get home, at midnight on Sunday. Six days of travel, with three days spent in Port North, Fla., broken down. Not a good start with a new car. Hopefully it's a fluke. The brakes locked up while I was driving 75 mph on I-75. By the time I got pulled off the interstate, the one wheel was on fire. My Nalgene came in handy . . .

I spent three nights in a really dumpy motel, walking a mile or two twice a day in scorching heat to wait in the Tuffy waiting room. As Florida seems to be the land of strip malls and subdivisions, there wasn't much to see within walking distance. One day I did find a bicycle to rent, which allowed me to go to a mineral springs resort. But I was scared off by the flock of scantily clad senior citizens. Oh well.

The strangest event of the trip was meeting Debra, from South Bend, Ind., in the Tuffy Automotive waiting room. Her husband is a professor of philosophy and law at Notre Dame. The strange part of it was that I ended up riding around in her car for an hour, to the beach to take a picture, and to the library. She was bored, in town to check up on her elderly mother, and I was obviously bored, so we had fun talking about northern Indiana. We found several common points (her husband was friends with John Howard Yoder). She grew up in Rhode Island and lived many years in San Francisco, so not quite your average midwesterner.

I watched lots of bad TV, trying to keep my mind occupied, so I wouldn't think of all the terrible things that could happen in the next 1600 miles of my trip. You see, I broke down after driving 15 miles! This experience only adds to my legendary status as the breakdown king.

While my confidence in the reliability and quality of this Mercedes has been shaken, I still think it's a good car. The brake seizure was not something that could have been predicted or identified by a mechanic. Fate and the Florida humidity were against me.

The car is noticeably crappier than what I saw in my head (most things are). The owner, who turned 89 on the day I bought her last car, did not intentionally mislead me. I'm not so sure about her son-in-law. Those no-good son-in-laws! The mechanic who inspected the car for me was less than verbose on the overall condition. I tried to pry the details out of him, but I guess I failed.

I don't regret my purchase (I did in North Port). I'm doing a thorough maintenance routine to cover everything that might have been neglected. After that, only time will tell. I'm depending on the historic reliability and toughness of German engineering.

I still plan to convert it to vegetable oil. (Sorry for being so predictable, Sarah.) A successful conversion will save us a lot of money, which might make up for the Tuffy bill and the cash I'm sinking into the car right now.