What's wrong with my car?

[Anonymous]

Need more detail - specifically how were you driving prior to this.

Some people here are saying the alternator, I don't think that's right because the alternator charges the battery. You'd have both a dead battery and a dead alternator. You seem to have neither given that your car starts after some time.

I had something similar to this myself on a vehicle except it was much worse. The car engine would shut off completely when I went from highway speed to slower city streets then it would take five or ten minutes before it would start again. I mention this because you have a transmission light. Basically what was happening is that the transmission would go into overdrive on the highway then not unlock at lower speeds which would cause the car to stall out. Once I got it running again - assuming it was just on city streets and didn't go into over drive- it was fine. The solution was to buy a new transmission (or rebuild the current one) or to disable overdrive which means that I got horrible gas mileage on highways but at least I didn't stall out or have trouble starting the car. I can't say for certain you have the same issue but given you got a transmission light on the dash, it's fair to assume something is wrong there.

The shop probably knows something is wrong with the transmission and they just ripped you off on all that other stuff. You shouldn't have paid for it. I would take the car to a transmission shop or just trade it in and get a new car. If you decide to dump the car, you may want to think about trying to sell those new tires to someone.

[Anonymous]

Step 1: new battery. 6 years is getting near the end of battery lifespan.

Step 2: Get the code reader for your car from amazon. They cost like $20 and save a lot of time and aggravation.

Step 3, if problems don't resolve: ask around for mechanic recs and take it to a reputable one.