Kathryn Grace, a 35 year-old mother of two, spent more than $12,000 on a new Ford Focus, which she hoped to use to drive herself to work, her daughter to school, and her baked goodies to the homeless shelter.
But something stopped her: manual transmission.
Manual transmission is a type of transmission used in cars, and other automotive machines.
Grace said that she bought the Focus at Gambino Ford, a local Buffalo dealership. They didn't have a hot pink Focus, so Mr. Gambino told her that he would order one from the factory and deliver it to her house free of charge.
She didn’t realize, however, that she had ordered the car with manual transmission, forgetting to ask for an automatic.
" My life is ruined," she said. " What am I supposed to do? Take the bus with filthy poors and blacks?"
Grace claims that she did not know that cars still came with manual transmission. She called the dealership, but they informed her that, because the Focus was custom-made, they would not take it back.
She says that the dealership was demeaning. "The person on the phone laughed at me and asked me if I was that blonde who came in last week," said Grace.
Now she's stuck with it.
She discovered a Focus with manual transmission may look like a Focus with an automatic transmission, but it doesn't always act like it. The car won't change gears automatically, something which shocked Grace.
As a result, with no car, Grace quit her job and took her children out of school. Furthermore, she stopped baking cookies and brownies for the homeless men at St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church.
"I'm extremely angry," said Grace. "I wanted to go to work, but I needed a car or a bus pass to be able to do that. But how am I going to get a bus pass when I have no car?”
27 News contacted Mr. Gambino, but he has not stopped laughing yet.
