My son called me Monday when trying to pick up his sister after school that his car wouldn't go. He was moving the gear selector but it was moving with zero friction and the car wasn't going into gear.
So I had to go pick the three of them up, get home, and get it figured out. We got it towed to my usual shop yesterday afternoon.
When I picked them up, I looked at it and based on the behavior, thought "It really can't be a complete transmission failure, right? It's the mechanical linkage between the gear selector and the transmission... I hope???" The car isn't probably worth enough to replace the transmission. A google search suggested that this was the correct diagnosis, not a transmission failure. But I was still holding my breath.
Well, the shop confirmed that it was just the cable. It turned a repair that would have cost thousands into costing hundreds, and his mom will have to repay me half the cost, so it's only 1/2 of the actual cost to me personally.
So that's good. It could have been SO much worse.