I bought this car for my Mom back in 00 brand new gold Mille S with Bose Radio. She was truly a little old lady school teacher and this was the only model t5hat had the Bose system as a factory stock item. We bought it late in the year when it was too late to order any 2000 models to get the sound and her music was of primary importance. When I pointed out the need for premium octane gas she laughed and said " I won't drive it enough to matter"., Well sh was right. In 2009 when she passed, I decided to keep the car. 9 years old and it had 48K miles on it and brand new Michelins on it.
When I started driving the car, I noticed that the engine was much nosier than I thought it should be even though it was running like a scalded dog! After a bit of checking, I realized that the noise was the supercharger which had apparently formed rust on the bearings from sitting so long without running (it probably wasn't started for over a year at the end).
To my surprise, I found that my Mom had taken out one of the third party extended warranties and it had 3 months left on it. Just enough to cover having Mazda replace the SC along with plugs and a coil or two.
Fast forward a year or two and my daughter was driving the car daily to school etc. I had just put a new set of Yokahamas on it along with brand new front struts, rear shocks, rotors and pads. On the way to school one morning my daughter misjudged traffic at an exit and wound up tapping the back bumper of what turned out to be an unmarked police car ;-).
This resulted in breaking the left headlight, the grill and a small buckle across the hood making it difficult to open, but other wise still running well.
After this the car had intermittent use and developed an exhaust leak.
I recently decided I needed to get her running again to have another vehicle at home for me when I learned that the exhaust leak was due to the CAT being split. I'm looking at this fun car with all these memories, but the reality for me is that after close to $1K to fix the exhaust issues, I still have a car with a couple of coils going out, close to 85K miles now on the original timing belt and the radio has ceased to work. I could spend the dough to fix her up, but then I still have a now 15 year old car that requires premium gas and its not what I want to put my now 15 year old second daughter in.
There's so much good in this car that I can't bear the though of scrapping it. It has 85K original miles, one owner (me and my Mom) No major accidents, a new SuperCharger (maybe 25K miles on it), new tires brakes and shocks etc......
I'm hoping there's someone out there that would like to take her for parts or repair for some reasonable amount. (at least more than scrap value). I'm located in Birmingham Alabama and it would have to be picked up here.
I can provide plenty of documentation, photos, etc if anyone is even interested.I'm hoping one of you has the time and interest to either get her back to her glory or at least use all of these good parts to get yours back in top shape. Anything is better than letting the crusher take another one away ;-)
If anyone is interested, please let me know. I'm not looking to make a killing on this, just rather know that she is being cared for or donating to another good cause
Thanks for reading!!