When the Gary phoned me in March 2004 to say he'd found a nice cheap reliable car for me (3 y/o 2001 Focus 2.0 ESP with 30k miles) and all I had to do was fly up from London to Aberdeen on Sleazyjet to collect it I took him at his word. Now barely eight and a half years later it's already broken down. The reversing light has now stopped working. I'm not sure whose definition of "reliable" this is but it's for damn sure not mine. That's not even mentioning the fact I've had to put tyres, brake pads and windscreen wipers on the bloody thing since then to keep it running. Bloody Ford and their quality control eh?
Anyhoo, so he bought it for me so he can fix it I reckon seeing as it's broken so quickly so I drove it round a while back for him to take a look. He had a shuftie round the arse end of it and pronounced the bulb ok which presumably means the reversing light switch is knackered. So he crawled under the front end and after much searching and grumbling and panting noises finally found the switch on top of the gearbox. Then this high pitched whiny / screeching / grating noise started up which scared the bejeesus out of me. If you've ever heard the sound of a starter motor with stripped pinion teeth trying to engage a flywheel you'll know the sort of noise I mean.
Luckily this turned out to be nothing to do with the car which was the main thing from my point of view. It was the Gary making the noise because apparently there wasn't enough space around the switch to reach it properly or get it out and he was complaining vociferously because his hand was stuck. He says the battery, battery tray and maybe other things will need taking out first before he can get at the switch properly. I accused him of being a big girl's blouse and trying to wriggle out of his promise to find me a car that wouldn't go wrong and he insisted he couldn't fix it there and then and it would need more work at a later date.
So that's me utterly screwed. No one can now tell if I'm trying to reverse out of a parking space at the Tesco in Ellon or the library when I go to collect my books because the bloody light doesn't come on so basically the car is undriveable and useless. It's an accident waiting to happen as I try to reverse out and someone else keeps driving forward, completely unaware we're about to have a serious and probably life threatening 3 mph collision. I paid all that money in good faith for a reliable car and now my only option is to mothball it and get a hire car while I wait for him to stop whinging and fix it properly.
Moral of the story. Never buy a Ford Focus. You have no chance of one going ten years without breaking down catastrophically and never trust anyone who says they've found you a nice cheap reliable car. Lying bastards the lot of them.