Cars, Cars, Cars
Well, I promised a run down of the whole-buy-a-new-car shindig, so let's see how much of this I can get down before I start the piano lesson run today. Why was buying a new (to us) car so traumatic for me?
First, some history: way back in the day, when I was fresh off my mission and got hired at my first real post-college job, I bought my first car. This was a great experience! I had a budget, and some idea of what I wanted, so my mother and I went around test driving at different dealerships for days. I drove all kinds of things. In the end I decided to purchase a brand-new Honda Civic. Oh, I loved that Civic. The only thing I didn't get was the color I wanted (dark blue). Other than that, it was perfect. The actual car buying experience was about as headache free as possible. It was late on a weekday, I did it through Costco's car buying program so there was no haggling, the finance lady was extremely non-pushy, and it went fairly quickly.
The next time I bought a car I was married, and it was a joint project. The two door Civic was just a pain in the rear with a baby in a car seat. Plus, we were already planning to try for #2, and the thought of having to wrangle two babies in and out of car seats in the back was not appealing at all. Again, we did a fair amount of test driving and a lot of research before purchasing our Mazda Protege5. It wasn't quite as smooth; test driving with a husband was different, and then I had to actually argue with the finance guy, who was probably just doing his job, but I found it obnoxious.
But of course the Protege5 wasn't exactly bigger than the Civic, it just had four doors. So when we were expecting #3, we decided it was time to move up to the dreaded minivan. (Well, I had dreaded it until the first time I loaded all my kids and their junk into it and marveled at how spacious it was!) This, however, was a disastrous car buying experience. We didn't get to do a lot of test driving. We didn't get to do as much research as I wanted. Since we lived hours away from civilization we had just one day to find a van on that trip. I was pregnant and hormonal and hungry, the dealership was busy, and the finance people were manipulative jerks. We ended up paying more than budgeted, and the night after we bought it I had a full-blown panic attack, sure that we had made a horrific, unalterable mistake.
Now fast forward ten years. Yes, TEN YEARS. That van I panicked about being a colossal mistake? That I worried we'd overpaid for and that it was going to be a lemon, an albatross hanging around our necks? Well, I drove that faithful silver queen for nearly 260,000 miles. Yep. It only had 4,000 miles on it when we got it, and we drove it into the ground. I'd known that getting a replacement was on the horizon. Terence liked to quip that we would get 500k out of it, but I was stressing about it. I live my life in the car, and we are 45 minutes away from our mechanic. Every time something went wrong with it, life went helter-skelter. Do you know how tricky it is to have a car in the shop when your kids have to be driven to school and your only other car is a pickup? When the only other cars you can borrow seat 5 at the most, but you need 6 seats? Yeah.
Anyway, it had been weighing on my mind for awhile. But this time, with our negative past experience buying the MPV, and my resistance to change in general (it's getting worse as I get older), I was not looking forward to it at all.
Starting early September the MPV's engine started smoking every time I drove it. Terence thought that it was because the last time he changed the oil he'd spilled some. He reassured me that it would burn off with time, that I had nothing to worry about. But when October arrived and the engine was still smoking, I pitched a bit of a fit. It was nearly time to re-register the van, and it needed to pass an emissions test. I was afraid there was no way a smoking engine was going to pass emissions, and how long could it possibly take for a little spilled oil to burn off? Terence finally agreed with me and did some poking and cleaning and decided that it wasn't a spill, it was a leak. An odd one because it never left oil stains when parked, but still a leak. As soon as the kids were off school for break, we got the van into the shop.
The news wasn't good. The leak wasn't bad (some kind of valve issue that only leaked while driving) but the mechanic gave a list of other things that the van was going to need soon. Did we want to keep putting money into it? A lot of money into a car with more than 260,000 miles on it?
Nope.
Car shopping it was. And I am officially a wreck of a car shopper now. I didn't enjoy it at all. I had a complete meltdown after the first day of it, sobbing to Terence that I didn't want a new car anymore. He told me then we needed to call the mechanic and have him fix the rest of the stuff on the MPV. I bawled that I didn't want to do that either. So he told me fine, I could walk the kids the 20 miles to school then.
Yeah, after that I finally pulled myself together.
Here is the end result of my endurance:
It's used of course, and it has 120k miles on it, but we can afford the payments and our mechanic gave us the thumbs up. I'm currently enjoying all the gadgets and the pretty leather interior while I can, before the kids trash it all.
The best part? It's exactly the shade of dark blue I wanted my Civic to be. I just had to wait sixteen years to get it.
First, some history: way back in the day, when I was fresh off my mission and got hired at my first real post-college job, I bought my first car. This was a great experience! I had a budget, and some idea of what I wanted, so my mother and I went around test driving at different dealerships for days. I drove all kinds of things. In the end I decided to purchase a brand-new Honda Civic. Oh, I loved that Civic. The only thing I didn't get was the color I wanted (dark blue). Other than that, it was perfect. The actual car buying experience was about as headache free as possible. It was late on a weekday, I did it through Costco's car buying program so there was no haggling, the finance lady was extremely non-pushy, and it went fairly quickly.
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| I still miss this car! It was so fun to drive. |
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| That's pretty much the only picture I have of the Protege. It was back in the film days, you know. |
But of course the Protege5 wasn't exactly bigger than the Civic, it just had four doors. So when we were expecting #3, we decided it was time to move up to the dreaded minivan. (Well, I had dreaded it until the first time I loaded all my kids and their junk into it and marveled at how spacious it was!) This, however, was a disastrous car buying experience. We didn't get to do a lot of test driving. We didn't get to do as much research as I wanted. Since we lived hours away from civilization we had just one day to find a van on that trip. I was pregnant and hormonal and hungry, the dealership was busy, and the finance people were manipulative jerks. We ended up paying more than budgeted, and the night after we bought it I had a full-blown panic attack, sure that we had made a horrific, unalterable mistake.
 |
| Here's our almost new Mazda MPV. Look at how little M & J were! |
Now fast forward ten years. Yes, TEN YEARS. That van I panicked about being a colossal mistake? That I worried we'd overpaid for and that it was going to be a lemon, an albatross hanging around our necks? Well, I drove that faithful silver queen for nearly 260,000 miles. Yep. It only had 4,000 miles on it when we got it, and we drove it into the ground. I'd known that getting a replacement was on the horizon. Terence liked to quip that we would get 500k out of it, but I was stressing about it. I live my life in the car, and we are 45 minutes away from our mechanic. Every time something went wrong with it, life went helter-skelter. Do you know how tricky it is to have a car in the shop when your kids have to be driven to school and your only other car is a pickup? When the only other cars you can borrow seat 5 at the most, but you need 6 seats? Yeah.
Anyway, it had been weighing on my mind for awhile. But this time, with our negative past experience buying the MPV, and my resistance to change in general (it's getting worse as I get older), I was not looking forward to it at all.
Starting early September the MPV's engine started smoking every time I drove it. Terence thought that it was because the last time he changed the oil he'd spilled some. He reassured me that it would burn off with time, that I had nothing to worry about. But when October arrived and the engine was still smoking, I pitched a bit of a fit. It was nearly time to re-register the van, and it needed to pass an emissions test. I was afraid there was no way a smoking engine was going to pass emissions, and how long could it possibly take for a little spilled oil to burn off? Terence finally agreed with me and did some poking and cleaning and decided that it wasn't a spill, it was a leak. An odd one because it never left oil stains when parked, but still a leak. As soon as the kids were off school for break, we got the van into the shop.
The news wasn't good. The leak wasn't bad (some kind of valve issue that only leaked while driving) but the mechanic gave a list of other things that the van was going to need soon. Did we want to keep putting money into it? A lot of money into a car with more than 260,000 miles on it?
Nope.
Car shopping it was. And I am officially a wreck of a car shopper now. I didn't enjoy it at all. I had a complete meltdown after the first day of it, sobbing to Terence that I didn't want a new car anymore. He told me then we needed to call the mechanic and have him fix the rest of the stuff on the MPV. I bawled that I didn't want to do that either. So he told me fine, I could walk the kids the 20 miles to school then.
Yeah, after that I finally pulled myself together.
Here is the end result of my endurance:
It's used of course, and it has 120k miles on it, but we can afford the payments and our mechanic gave us the thumbs up. I'm currently enjoying all the gadgets and the pretty leather interior while I can, before the kids trash it all.
The best part? It's exactly the shade of dark blue I wanted my Civic to be. I just had to wait sixteen years to get it.
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