This car should slowly grow on you. You have also purchased one of the few cars out there that can teach you something. That is priceless as it will improve you self confidence and enable you to eventually do many things that otherwise you would never have been able to do. This lasts for the balance of your life by the way. Give your grandfather a couple of years and even his viewpoint might change. Great oportunity to discuss fairly long term plans for improvement and getting him involved with any planning by the way. Any involvement with him because of this car you will both remember. The winning baseline with an older car is to have it in better shape than it was in the last year. That way keeping it long term does work out pretty well. You fortunatly live in a kinder climate than mine and that helps preservation efforts as well. This car will develop more character as it gets older although some is already evident. People are trying to purchase it form you now. With a little luck you will learn the scrounging skills, cheap parts negotiation, and other source skills as well. Plus a running aquaintance with salvage yards. These skills are much harder to aquire with a newer ricebox. Do not mind your present discomfort with mechanical things as you will learn. We all started somehow about at the same level at first. The best way and time to learn about getting a lot of milage out of very little money is when you are a student anyways. Turns you into a respected astute buyer. Anyone can pay top dollar for everything in life but it is much better to know the ropes. That is a learning project in itself. Unfortunatly this is not taught in school. Anyways I would recommend a car simular to yours if I still had a child young enough to be still in school. Or a grandchild old enough to drive. In fact I have already purchased the 123 type diesel cars for that crew of grandchildren. Will keep me in contact with them plus provide an ageless interest to share with each other and myself hopefully. The granchildren seem sophisticated enough for my plan to work hopefully. Time will tell as it always dioes. One last thought. You can always sell a car like yours anytime. But you may be suprised how hard it is to replace it with a simular car. I was looking through the ebay listings of older mercedes cars probably 10 years older than yours the other day. A lot were 15,000 for close to junk cars. They never had owners that improved the general condition overall each and every year. It is more a mater of planning and disipline than money. What you are driving kept up will never depreciate. Wish I had several of my earlier cars now as my father suggested I put them in storage. We did not have enough room in the big city to do it. Too bad but such is life.