The Saga of the Change of Cars

As my last post might have suggested, I bought a new car this week. A NEW new car. Some of you will recall that I have said on multiple occasions that I would never buy a brand new car again. They're too expensive, they depreciate the second you drive them off the lot, blah blah blah, etc. Nonetheless, I now have this 2008 Hyundai Accent parked outside the church.

I was quite loathe to give up my old car, a 2000 Chevy Cavalier, despite its many issues. It had nearly 180,000 miles on it, and those were my 180,000 miles. I bought it in 1999 as a graduation present to myself, when it had eleven miles on it, six of them from my test drive. It has been a reliable car for nine years, but it's been going rapidly downhill for the last six months of so. I reluctantly started searching for used cars, but found nothing in a reasonable price range that was as comfortable, fun, or fuel efficient as my car. It seems that everyone is currently looking for used, small, fuel efficient cars, and therefore the prices have been jacked up into ridiculousness. The financing terms they were offering were pretty ludicrous as well. Maybe it's just me, but buying a car on credit card-like interest didn't seem like such a hot idea. After several trips to car lots that involved me sitting at a desk and asking, "Are you kidding me?" I gave up and decided to try putting some money into the old car instead. Good idea, right?

Yeah...no. Two mechanics informed me that I'd have to drop at least $2,000 for my car to even be safe to drive. Back to square one.

Through a series of miscommunications, I ended up at a dealership to which I did not intend to go - a dealership selling only new cars. Hrm. Ah, what the heck, I'll test drive a few and see what I like. A few spins around the block and one really remarkable deal later, and I left the lot with my brand new car, which was cheaper than most of the used cars I looked at, and has a crazy warranty and much, much better financing terms than any used lot was willing to give me. I'm pleased, even though I was told that it's a "minister car" (sigh), and even though I discovered today much to my irritation that it doesn't have cruise control, which is what comes of buying a car quickly and unexpectedly. But I can deal with both of those things, because it's cute and kicky, gets fabulous gas mileage, and the manual transmission means I can drive it like a race car wannabe.