death rattle

we loved the forester! it rides smoothly, has good acceleration, is comfortable, spacious, etc. literally everything i hoped it would be. all of the windows and speakers even work!

unfortunately, when we got back from our test drive, a manager was there to look at erma and give us his trade-in estimate: $100. maybe $200, depending. just from walking around her, he thought $1000, but then he turned erma on and pressed the gas while in park and heard what he termed a "death rattle." he said that rattle i've been hearing is a deep engine knock that's indicative of piston problems. super. oh, and that there's no way to effectively and inexpensively fix it - you either have to rebuild the engine, or drop in a new one. hoorah. we could maybe get a little bit more by selling it on our own, according to him, but probably not over $1000 max. but, he also said that while she could last another year or two and be fine, she could also seize up at any time and just die ... or shoot a piston through the engine, if i hit things just right. which, considering that i have an hour and a half of commute time each day, half of which is on the interstate, puts an extra feeling of emphasis on finding a replacement. obviously we'll take erma in to an objective mechanic to get an outside opinion before we decide what to do, but this still changes things as we were hoping to get closer to $1500 on a trade in. so now scott's suggesting that we get something smaller like a camry or prius now, and then in a few years we could get a forester and he would take the smaller car. bah! i'm pouty because i want a forester, and because i don't want to die mid-commute, and because i'm finding it hard to be objective in looking at other cars online.