My car CD's skipping: anything to do about this?

Factual Questions
1

My car CD player is evidently Calvinist and some CDs are just damned from birth. I’ll put in a CD that I’ve played 8000 times and the 8001st goes by without an issue. I’ll rent a book on CD and play it and it’ll sound like it’s being read by Max Headroom, skipping like a buckdancer on amphetamines for the first three selections and then playing perfectly, while the next I rent plays perfectly throughout.

Tonight I bought two brand new factory sealed CDs. The first played flawlessly, the second (Sufyan Stevens, incidentally, the current court favorite) was The Max Headroom Singers. Sometimes if I take the CD out and reinsert it then the skipping stops, other times it skips just as much but in different places.

I’ve tried headcleaners but that’s about all and there was no real difference. Anybody have any suggestions what will stop this? (Incidentally, the CDs that skip so much in the car will play perfectly in stationary or portable CD players.)

2

Ummm! Doesn’t that say something?

3

All it says are that those CDs are fine. I suspect the OP had already figured that part out.

As to what can be done about it, probably nothing. A CD lens cleaner might fix the issue, if you’re lucky, but IME this kind of random failure isn’t generally due to lens dirt. If that fails, you can try removing all power to it for several hours, and see if that resolves the issue. There’s always a chance. Most likely, however, it’s an electrical or mechanical issue. Unless it’s a particularly expensive unit, it’s probably not worth having repaired.