The History Kid

I'm glad you'll at least get some closure. I was lucky enough to talk to my grandmother on the day that she passed. There's still things I wish were different, but we don't get those choices, sadly.

It's an /r/nosleep kind of night!

At the risk of a pissing contest (which I'll limit myself to this, since I answered the question posed in the OP), you can literally say that about any car. Every vehicle on the road has something that someone somewhere isn't going to like about it. People rag on Toyota's, Ford's, Chevy's, Nissan's, and Subaru's. The truth is for everyone complaint there are usually hundreds to thousands of satisfied customers. I've never known a Nissan to last more than 80,000 miles, but lo and behold there's thousands of people who prove that's not the norm. That's the normal ebb and flow of sales, not just cars - but all retail and sales environments.

I can see that, based on what I've heard from a couple of my interns who have the Focus. There's a reason we use Fusions and Taurus in the federal system. The Fusions will just cut through anything, and that's including the Hybrid - which should have faltered this winter when we hit -34 F. Gotta say I'm impressed. My boss's niece owns a Murano as well (08 I think), and seems to love hers. Appreciate the sentiment, but as someone who has family who actually assemble the vehicles, I'll take their word over a dealership. Across the 4 years I've run a Fusion, I've never once had an issue.

The Focus and Fiesta were cars I never understood the appeal outside of their affordability. But even that is questionable. Fusions weren't exactly expensive. Both Focus and Fiesta rode horrible, let alone the really really (imo) dumb appearance of the Fiesta. I get the compact idea, but it's just not a car that made any kind of fiscal sense to me.

Just getting ready to put chicken on the grill. Mourning over my last hard lemonade.

The first generation Fusions (2006-2008) were, frankly, terrible cars. My grandmother owned one, and it was like driving an aluminum box with wheels on it. They really outdid themselves for the 2013-2019 generation. The EcoBoost, and Sport ones are nice, the Hybrid's are actually built around the same schematic as the Twin-Turbo's in the Focus RX. If you take them out of Hybrid mode, they'll bite you in the you-know-where speed wise. My choice for the next vehicle I get is similar to yours, I expect in the next year or so to adopt, which will change the overall battle rhythm needs of a vehicle for me.

I have a 2018 Ford Fusion Hybrid Platinum. Sometime in the next few years I'll be adding a second vehicle, which will likely be an Edge. The hybrid is a fun car to drive. I bought the car while it was still at the factory being assembled, and was lucky enough to be able to drive it off the lot with 0.7 miles on it. Before this, I drove a 2015 Ford Fusion SE, a 2006 Ford Taurus SEL, and my first car was a 1998 Mercury Sable LS.

I'm not sure it's so much haggling as it is playing the incentives, and starting with a low ball offer. I've only dealt with a used car purchase once, the other two times were lease-to-buy sales on new vehicles. Used cars have more room to drop than new ones do. If you don't drive over 10k miles a year though, leases tend to make more sense than buying used, barring insurance.

Jeeps are overrated. Getting parts is a pain too. Knowing how to deal helps too. The pricetag on my car was $42,050. I managed to bring them down to $29,990 after all the incentives and haggling. Three months start-to-finish.

Oh boy. Do I have to keep an eye on you two?

Commander in Chief - the President.

A captain is an O-3, a general is an O-9. I'd pass on the general part. Don't really care for that amount of responsibility. I'll take my GS-12 position, at this point in my life, over anything else. Still...I'm pretty sure I'm an AO or XO in about eight different areas (eight different jobs on top of all of my directorate duties).

A drill sergeant is a title that an enlisted soldier holds, not an officer.