Ok, I realize my Durango was used when I purchased it. And, I know that it had over 80,000 miles on it at the time, but I still didn’t expect it to be such a lemon!

Ok, I realize my Durango was used when I purchased it. And, I know that it had over 80,000 miles on it at the time, but I still didn’t expect it to be such a lemon!

I had always admired the body style of the 1999-ish Dodge Durango’s. Their body style is almost menacing. When you see that Durango hauling butt down the road you think, “Now THAT’s an SUV.” I may be a woman, but those Durango’s still made me want to grunt like Tim “The Toolman” Taylor.

So, when my husband and I planned on a third child, but the third turned out to be twins, we knew his Grand Prix and my Blazer weren’t going to cut it for hauling around a family of six. Neither one of us, however, was willing to break down and be the one driving a mini-van. So, we thought a Durango, with it’s awesome body styling and its extra seating was the perfect answer.

Boy, were we ever wrong. First off, the kids had to climb over those beautiful leather seats in order to get to the back row of seats. Now, I don’t know if you know this, but kids aren’t very cleanly. Consequently, the seats were constantly covered in little footprints. This, of course, is not very good for the blood pressure and stress levels a parent of twins already feels. So, neither my husband nor myself were thrilled about this arrangement.

Of course, a Durango is a hog on gas. When we first bought the SUV, we figured it was worth the extra dollars to save the embarrassment of driving a mini-van. But, as the credit card debt grew larger, we started to realize it wasn’t such a great idea. In fact, every time we wanted to go somewhere as an entire family, we realized, it was for road trips or to visit family members who live far away. Obviously, a gas-guzzler wasn’t the right choice.

The final straw came, however, when we drove the Durango to a large city a couple hours away. We were taking the family on a nice outing to a children’s museum. About halfway there, the transmission literally fell apart without warning. So, there we were, stranded with 4 boys, ages 9, 7, and, of course, the 1 year old twins. To top it off, this was a Saturday and we were in a city we were unfamiliar with. So, finding a tow truck, a car rental place, and a mechanic to fix the Durango was not an easy task. As you can imagine, this was not a pretty scenario.

Luckily, a lady with, of all things, a mini-van, stopped to help us. She drove us to a car rental place and helped us get on our merry way. We managed to find a tow truck and paid half of the kids’ college fund to get it towed to a mechanic we had never heard of. We had the mechanic slap in a rebuilt transmission and we picked it up a couple days later.

When we picked up the Durango, the mechanic told us that this sort of thing happens all the time with Dodge trucks and SUV’s. He said they are notorious for having terrible transmissions.

Of course, with a family of six, we didn’t want to take the chance of something like this ever happening again. So, we took the Durango to a dealership and, well, now I’m driving a mini-van.