[00 SS]

I had both of my daily drivers hammered by hail last week. I go to see the insurance adjuster on Saturday. Both are older cars and not worth much and I am anticipating both will be totalled. I have a few choices. I can let them be totaled and combine the money and go buy another car. I can total one and fix the other or I can take whatever little they give me and keep both cars. I don't have much money right now to kick in over the insurance money for repair or replacement. One is a '99 malibu with 204K and the other is a '88 Park Ave with 120K (don't laugh it's actually a nice car).

Both cars are well dented but the glass is intact and both are still mechanically sound.

1. If I keep both I will not be able to afford to fix either properly and the insurance will force me to drop my comprehensive coverage on them. Plus, they likely won't give much money on either one.

2. If I keep one, the money from the other might be enough to fix the other properly.

3. If I total out both I might get enough money to buy one half way decent replacement.

I'm leaning toward number 2 or number 3. If I go with 2, I'll probably keep the Buick and fix it. If I go with 3, I might have $5K or so to buy a car. With the $5k in mind I did some searching and found a few prospects. The most promising one I found was 2002 Lincoln LS V8. It has just under 79K miles and looks to be OK in the pictures. Obviously if I get serious about buying it, I'll check it out as thoroughly as I can. I've drive one of these before and it was a nice car. But other than that, I don't know much about them. Does anyone have any first hand experience with these? Any major common problems? Anything to look out for? I also found a 2000 park Avenue with 83K that looked interesting.

What would you do in this situation? Do you have any suggestions for a good car to look for? I need a larger 4 door for the family and I prefer American. I also prefer sedans since it's a daily driver and the gas milage is generally better in cars than SUV's or trucks. I commute about 70 miles per day round trip. Both of my current cars get 25-27 mpg on my drive and like to stay at least at that level.

[00 SS]

Tax credits? I hadn't thought of that. I'll look into it, although I'm not sure our income this year will be high enough to make that worth much. The Buick has the 3800 V6. It's one of the first years with the sequential port injection and a mass air sensor. I took both cars to be estimated on Saturday. As I suspected both cars were considered total losses. Unfortunately, since this was a "catastrophy" center, they don't settele total losses on site. The paper work was sent to Dallas and I'm expecting to hear from them sometime next week on the settlement.

Oddly, after the estimate on Saturday, I went to the oil change place with the Buick and the was talking to the guys about what happened. One of them wants to buy the Malibu after I get the settlement from the insurance. He was able to look it up their computer and see the maintenance history, so he knows it's in as good a shape as I say it is. So I may keep both and sell the Malibu.

The more I look at the Lincoln I found in my price range, more it looks like a money pit. In one of the pictures, if you look very closely, the airbag light and the check engine light are on. The tach shows the engine was at idle when the photo was taken. I'm guessing if those were simple fixes, the dealer would fix it and sell it for more money.

Believe it or not, I think the Buick is getting about 1 mpg better than before the strom. Golf ball effect? Who knows. I also noticed it's developing an exhaust leak (near the cat I think), so that may contribute as well.