Lemon Laws

By Amy E. Feldman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - If you've got lemons, make lemonade. But if your car is a lemon, make a lawsuit.

Turns out there are any number of people happy to rant about how terrible their cars are. There's even a website called mycarsucks.com devoted to car horror stories including that of a guy who bought a car that died four times on the way home from the lot, because, according to him, it was sold without a frost plug. Not sure what that is, but it sounds like a hassle.

I don't about cars, but I do know about lemon laws, which vary by state but in most, lemon laws cover new vehicles that have a defect that substantially impairs the car's value or safety and that cannot be repaired after 3 tries by an authorized dealership, or that causes the vehicle to be out of commission for a certain number of days during the first 12 months. The defect must generally be caused in the manufacture, and not as a result of an accident or poor maintenance. And the laws generally only cover new cars.

You can also do a search of websites devoted to legal recourse and makes and models of common lemons that can provide advice - and space to rant about yours.