A couple of months ago, my wonderful wife, Cecelia, and I did something I had never done before.
We purchased a new vehicle. I am not talking about a “new to me” vehicle. I am talking about a “brand new” vehicle.
I am not going to lie. I enjoyed driving it home. When I pulled into the garage, the odometer displayed 85 miles part of which I put on it during two test drives. (I am sure this happiness will be much less, so when we make the first payment, which I think is due any time. Cecelia takes care of the bill paying…LOL.)
For all intents and purposes our Mazda SUV died a couple of months ago. We had owned it for less than five years. It had less than 94,000 miles. We even still had a few payments left on it. It took multiple visits to three mechanics just to find out what the problem was.
This included two very good local ones.
Finally, one of the mechanics at the dealership called us after the second visit. The bottom line was it was going to cost $10,000 to fix it. The dealership did offer a relatively low interest rate if we wanted to go with the repair option. We did not!
I ended up getting it towed back to Corbin. We sold it to some company Cecelia found on the Internet, which gave us $5,100 for it. This largely covered the towing bills, the cost to pay it off and the cost for all the attempted repairs we had done to it. (I had so been looking forward to not having a car payment for a while…LOL.)
We still had our Nissan Murano, which Cecelia usually drives, and my old 19-year-old Hyundai Sonata. This is usually just my “to work and back” vehicle. I like to keep a little car around, which gets good gas mileage, just to keep the miles off our better vehicles.
At this point, the Sonata does not look like much, but it still runs well. The paint job is in lousy shape, one of the sun visors is broken and the color on the replaced door handle does not match. The letters “S” “N” and one of the “A’s” have fallen off the back of the car making it an “OTA.” I did drive it to Lexington and back a few months ago without issue.
There are people out there who enjoy car shopping. They enjoy the haggling and the wheeling and dealing. My father-in-law, George Updike, is one of those. I don’t get it, but to each their own.
Ceceila and I both hate car shopping, but, as I pointed out to her a few months ago, at least it is better than a root canal.
After deliberating for a few weeks, we decided to buy a new Hyundai Tuscan. It is a mid-size SUV, which is roughly the same size as our Nissan Murano.
We decided to go the new vehicle route for a few reasons, one of which was the interest rate. You cannot beat zero percent interest.
Since Cecelia and I are the kind of people, who drive their vehicles until the wheels are ready to fall off, we decided to go the new vehicle route this time around. We figure we will get our money’s worth out of it.
When I say we drive our vehicles until the wheels are ready to fall off, I am not exaggerating much. Our Nissan Altima had approximately 170,000 miles on it, when the automotive hospital called in the family before discontinuing life support. I got it towed from the parking lot behind my office. The engine basically died.
We sold the body of it, which was still in good shape, to one of the mechanics at Owens. He planned to put a new engine in it and make it his daughter’s first car. I hope she enjoyed it.
As we were buying our Tuscan, the words of my former co-worker, Joyce Morgan, echoed through my head, which pretty much summed up the vehicle buying experience for me.
When she purchased her last car, the salesman asked her if she was happy.
“I will be happy when it is paid off,” she replied.
