It's a sad day for me - my wife and I decided it's time to go ahead and move toward selling the TL, as hard a decision it is to make. The main reason is the tranny is starting to show signs of problems. After the internal screen got clogged a few weeks ago, the shifting is a little weird. After 5 years of owning this car, I can tell when something is not right. Realistically, I would not put in a used tranny unless the original tranny went out and I had to sell her. A tranny rebuild is at least $2000, which is really too much to put into a car with 155K miles and worth under $5000. At worst, we might wait until the tranny screen clogs again and then replace it and sell it, assuming it does in fact clog again. It may run for another 12 months, who knows.

But I have never had work done on wear and tear parts like the starter, alt, AC, suspension, rotors, CV joints, etc. So just from sheer experience, I know these will all go out sooner than later, it's just a fact. I cannot see myself working, going to school and being able to fix these problems when they happen. Maybe if we had a third car, which we don't.

I have only owned 2 cars in my life, this 1997 2.5 TL and a 1976 Camaro. I have driven the TL for over 5 years and 120K miles, the Camaro for 8 years and 130K miles before that. So I have been very lucky with cars so far, I hope it keeps going.

Since I commute so much and we have land we want to build on, I am going to take one for the team and drive my wife's 2000 Civic EX, which will house my stereo equipment of course. We'll look at an Accord coupe for her and for weekend/trip driving. I'll stick around the forum after we sell her, since I have some experience with the first gen TLs.