Thank You, Chrysler

Today was interesting. I met Paul at work at 6:00 AM to make the 4.5 hour drive to Shelbyville, IN to visit a supplier. Our rental car was dropped off Friday afternoon so it would be ready this morning. So there it was, a 2008 Chrysler Sebring with only 13,000 miles on it. I drove it for about 1.5 hours until we met up with another guy from work at a Park and Ride. We picked him up, and drove the rest of the way.

On the way back today, all was going well. I even took a nap in the car. Right before we entered back into Michigan the car suddenly lurched forward and the warning chime came on. The check engine light was on. The car went into some sort of "limp" mode because it wouldn't down-shift and had no acceleration at all. It started shuttering really bad and the check engine light started flashing and the chime kept binging. So I looked in the owner's manual and it said if the check engine light flashes, the car should not be driven because severe catalytic converter damage could occur. Oh well, it's not my car and Enterprise shouldn't buy junk. So we kept driving it. In our defense...would it be wiser to pull over on the side of the road and wait for help, or drive to a dealer? I think drive to a dealer. The car was under warranty anyway so it's not like the damage wouldn't be paid for by someone other than Chrysler.

When we got back to Michigan we pulled back into the Park and Ride lot and I suggested shutting the car off, and re-starting it to see if the error message cleared itself (I thought the car just mis-fired and got confused). So we shut it off, and when we went back to start it the car just cranked and cranked and cranked and I finally floored the gas and it started rough. Paul was nervous about driving the car anymore. So next to the lot, there was a Chrysler dealer. We drove the car over (it was around 7:00 PM now) and asked them to pull the code so we could find out if we should keep going back to Detroit in it or not. Well, the car never set a code. It just said "Fault". When they started the car, something was REALLY wrong. The car was knocking and shuttering and would almost stall, then rev really high, then shutter and act like it would die. The service manager said he would NOT advise us driving this car anymore and to call Enterprise. So we called Enterprise, but the office was closed so we couldn't get another car. So...a taxi ended up taking us the rest of the way back. I finally got home at 10:00 PM. A long day, and a junky car.