Everyday Randomness

Hubby and I had planned to donate a couple cars to charity this year, but it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting it done in time for our donations to count towards this year’s tax season. We’ve got a couple of “junkers” that aren’t really junk, but we just don’t have any use for them anymore.

First we’ve got my old Saturn. It’s been wrecked (some doped up kid tried to make his own lane while we were sitting in the median), but the plastic body pieces it needs to fix it are relatively cheap. The problem is we’re tired of feeding it transmissions. In 3 years we went through 5 transmissions because of the differential pin breaking. It would sling through the bell housing leaving a nice big hole (factory weakness), and we eventually got tired of it. We had the last pin welded in place, but hubby thinks he’s a race car driver, so I gave up trying to fix it. With a new transmission, someone who won’t rag it, and a new front quarter panel it’ll be a nice car.

Next we’ve got the Taurus. Hubby’s Grandma isn’t able to drive anymore, so she gave us her 92 Taurus when we parked the Saturn for the last time. We drove the Taurus for a total of 2 weeks before it died. Yep, yet another transmission went out on us. We were going to fix it, but we just never got around to it. By the time hubby did decide to tear into it, we decided we didn’t want to shell out extra cash for Ford specialty tools because we will never own another Ford. We know that for a fact.

With a new transmission the Taurus will be a great car, and that’s what’s great about car donations. The car doesn’t have to be in perfect condition to donate it. There are some charities who repair the cars and give them to families in need. There are other charities that just auction the cars to raise cash for their foundation, and then there are charities like Car Angel who use the cash from the auctions to produce a product that will help others.

Car Angel is a non-profit organization that uses the cash from the car auctions and other donations to make videos targeted to kids and teens. The videos are centered around lessons all children should learn. Some of them are religious oriented, but all of them teach important lessons. One of the videos focuses on drug use, and the problems it can cause. I especially like that one because I’ve seen so many people around me fall victim to drug abuse. It’s a video that I think every teenager should watch. Car Angels has given away over 2.4 million of these videos already, and with more donations they’ll be able to keep producing videos just like this one.