All of a sudden one day the car started making a rattling noise when stepping the brakes and clearly the rear of the vehicle was shimmying. It got progressively worse until it was ridiculous and our mechanic was amazed that we were still driving it like that. He said the rotors were worn unevenly and that it was due to the heat not dissipating and that it must have been due to hard braking... but I don't know - it is happening again. It seems like the brakes are just BAD on this vehicle. I will probably have to change the rotors now.

Update from May 25, 2009: The symptom is more like a rattling. It gets progressively worse.

Now, I decided to have a look myself. I first took off the rear wheels since the rattling seemed to be from there.

I have drum brakes in the rear, and all seemed well. So I took off the front wheels.

The rotors up front looked OK. I inspected them by turning by hand to see if I could detect whether they were out of round. THey looked OK. I noticed the brake pads seemed a little low. Still had some padding to them, but not much. I decided to change the pads to see if maybe the cause of the whole thing was simply needing brake pads... YES THAT WAS IT!!!!

Took it out for a test drive after putting on some platinum pads, 40 dollars from Pep Boys (NAPA was closed on Sat.!), and no rattling. I detected a slight bit, very little, and it seemed to improve as the pads "broke in".

By the way changing the front pads on this vehicle is the easiest I have ever done. Remove two short bolts on the caliber and slide it right off.... Ahh real nice. Next time we detect the rattling I know it's time to change the pads.