A Ford Five-Hundred

This wasn't as difficult as I expected.  I hit the refresh button and found this on CL

Gave the number a call, turns out I was the first to get in touch.  Since the sellers were close, I jumped in the car to take a look.

Car suffered from the paint peeling from the aluminum hood, but was otherwise rust free

• Interior was in good shape
• As advertised, it leaked oil
• It was leaking coolant, but not from the radiator
• Christmas tree dashboard
• Front brakes in good condition, rear brakes would need replacement
• A/C worked!

Ford Freestyles are come in a variety of configurations, all contain the notoriously failure-prone CVT transmission.  Later "Taurus-X" incarnations of this vehicle switched to a six-speed auto.  Many of the transmission failures were in the first 100K of the life of the car.  A CVT is essentially two conical pulleys connected by a belt, where the belt rides on a "larger" section of a pulley, thus changing the ration between the input and output shafts. Failure of the belt removes the connection between input and output, resulting in your car drifting to a halt, usually at an inopportune time, which in the case of Ford's CVT, was a common issue.

But with 286K on the motor and transmission, I figured... what could go wrong?  What a better proof point for a durable transmission than one that has survived this long  This car must have a more stout than average transmission, otherwise it would have failed by now.  Anyway, If things go around the bend, I'd gain valuable experience rebuilding or replacing a transmission.

Years ago, I worked with a guy, let's call him Tom (because that's his name) who only purchased cars with at least 100K miles.  Why?  He wanted to make sure they could go that far.  His reasoning was that somebody else did the detective work of finding a durable car and paid for the endeavor as well. Today, 250K is the new 100K.

The very next day, wallet $500 lighter, I'm the owner of a Ford Freestyle.  Drove it home, it's now depositing its coolant and oil on my garage floor, so we should have some fun.