Sunday, April 16, 2006
Lord help me, I bought a car. It only took me three straight weeks of research, worry, denial, and stress, but I finally bought a car. It's a 2003 PT Cruiser GT,(Rut-roh, gotta watch the Lead Foot!) bright blue, 4-speed transmission.
My poor bucket-o-rust was just 6 months shy of it's 12th birthday, had a major oil leak, electrical problems that made the entire dash cluster go in and out on a whim (i.e.: no speedometer, no gas guage, odometer not accurate, etc.), and my most recent breakdown was the A/C. I had grown gleefully accustomed to living without a car payment, and now I have to rejoin the Automotive Indebted Society. The new one technically gets less mileage than my old one, but considering the condition it was in, I doubt I was getting very much mileage out of it anymore (not that I could tell, what with the odometer not working anymore). Ah but now, the trip to get the kids will mean cool air, smooth, quiet ride, and not only the knowledge of exactly how fast I'm driving, but CRUISE CONTROL. All I can say is, THIS ROCKS. Ask me again next month when my first payment is due, however. ;-)
Can I just say that Carmax ROCKS? I had narrowed my choices down to an 03 or newer PT Cruiser or a Neon, but the catch was, I wanted a manual transmission. Oh, and for CHRIST SAKE why does it seem like 90% of the cars on the market are silver? Or that stupid Sorta-Gold-Sorta-Brown color? I mean are people looking at the choices and saying, "OOOoooo, it would look like I'm driving JEWELRY!!" It just screams "Old Fogey" to me. [My apologies to all my friends who all probably have silver or Sorta Gold cars] Clearly, I also wanted a bright color--but unlike what most salesmen seem to assume, my gender does not dictate that color be the highest priority on my list of options. The problem was, finding a 4-speed Neon is difficult, and finding one in a PT Cruiser is even more rare. The Neon was really my 2nd choice, and if I were going to get another Neon, it was going to have to be the R/T style, which of course, is more expensive. So I searched. And searched. I am now an expert in Methods of Internet Auto Searching. It was looking like CarMax was the only place that was going to be able to find My Car for me, but I was a bit chagrinned to think I'd have to pay a transfer fee for a car if it were sitting in Florida or South Carolina somewhere--and what if it came in and I wasn't impressed? Oh the disappointment. So Friday I logged on One More Time to find that a local Carmax had My Car! Another search turned up a red one, too--it wasn't a GT, but it was an '05. I emailed both places. Saturday morning, the phone war began. The Red 05 lost out quickly, though, because the salesman couldn't FIND the car. Whatever, I live too far away to be driving all over hell to look at both cars anyway. So we drove down to Carmax, took it for a spin and fell in love. The internet price was already lower than the Bluebook price (I checked), and was an excellent value compared to other cars like it I had been pricing over the past couple of weeks. So it was all a question of financing. Well, it turns out they do so much business with the online company I'd already gotten approval from, that I could get longer financing terms for no additional charges, which lowered my payments. Yee-haw!
And then the final bit of good news: I told the sales guy up front that my old car's odometer wasn't acurate. But the guy who did the appraisal didn't know that, so naturally, he valued my car quite a bit higher than it should have been. Sales Guy called him and reminded him of the odometer issue, and Appraisal Guy said, "Damn, it's quitting time, I don't want to stay and redo this. Just give her the price I quoted." So instead of the meager peanuts I expected, I got enough back from my old Bucket O Junk to make my first three payments!
When I bought my first car, I didn't sleep for 3 days, I was so stressed out about getting screwed. Oh, and I was hacked off that they put my hubby on the title, even though I didn't need his credit and he didn't even know how to drive the mo-fo. And when the agent stopped down the street in it with me to fill it up for me, it cost all of $8.75 to fill the tank. My, how times have changed.
My poor bucket-o-rust was just 6 months shy of it's 12th birthday, had a major oil leak, electrical problems that made the entire dash cluster go in and out on a whim (i.e.: no speedometer, no gas guage, odometer not accurate, etc.), and my most recent breakdown was the A/C. I had grown gleefully accustomed to living without a car payment, and now I have to rejoin the Automotive Indebted Society. The new one technically gets less mileage than my old one, but considering the condition it was in, I doubt I was getting very much mileage out of it anymore (not that I could tell, what with the odometer not working anymore). Ah but now, the trip to get the kids will mean cool air, smooth, quiet ride, and not only the knowledge of exactly how fast I'm driving, but CRUISE CONTROL. All I can say is, THIS ROCKS. Ask me again next month when my first payment is due, however. ;-)
Can I just say that Carmax ROCKS? I had narrowed my choices down to an 03 or newer PT Cruiser or a Neon, but the catch was, I wanted a manual transmission. Oh, and for CHRIST SAKE why does it seem like 90% of the cars on the market are silver? Or that stupid Sorta-Gold-Sorta-Brown color? I mean are people looking at the choices and saying, "OOOoooo, it would look like I'm driving JEWELRY!!" It just screams "Old Fogey" to me. [My apologies to all my friends who all probably have silver or Sorta Gold cars] Clearly, I also wanted a bright color--but unlike what most salesmen seem to assume, my gender does not dictate that color be the highest priority on my list of options. The problem was, finding a 4-speed Neon is difficult, and finding one in a PT Cruiser is even more rare. The Neon was really my 2nd choice, and if I were going to get another Neon, it was going to have to be the R/T style, which of course, is more expensive. So I searched. And searched. I am now an expert in Methods of Internet Auto Searching. It was looking like CarMax was the only place that was going to be able to find My Car for me, but I was a bit chagrinned to think I'd have to pay a transfer fee for a car if it were sitting in Florida or South Carolina somewhere--and what if it came in and I wasn't impressed? Oh the disappointment. So Friday I logged on One More Time to find that a local Carmax had My Car! Another search turned up a red one, too--it wasn't a GT, but it was an '05. I emailed both places. Saturday morning, the phone war began. The Red 05 lost out quickly, though, because the salesman couldn't FIND the car. Whatever, I live too far away to be driving all over hell to look at both cars anyway. So we drove down to Carmax, took it for a spin and fell in love. The internet price was already lower than the Bluebook price (I checked), and was an excellent value compared to other cars like it I had been pricing over the past couple of weeks. So it was all a question of financing. Well, it turns out they do so much business with the online company I'd already gotten approval from, that I could get longer financing terms for no additional charges, which lowered my payments. Yee-haw!
And then the final bit of good news: I told the sales guy up front that my old car's odometer wasn't acurate. But the guy who did the appraisal didn't know that, so naturally, he valued my car quite a bit higher than it should have been. Sales Guy called him and reminded him of the odometer issue, and Appraisal Guy said, "Damn, it's quitting time, I don't want to stay and redo this. Just give her the price I quoted." So instead of the meager peanuts I expected, I got enough back from my old Bucket O Junk to make my first three payments!
When I bought my first car, I didn't sleep for 3 days, I was so stressed out about getting screwed. Oh, and I was hacked off that they put my hubby on the title, even though I didn't need his credit and he didn't even know how to drive the mo-fo. And when the agent stopped down the street in it with me to fill it up for me, it cost all of $8.75 to fill the tank. My, how times have changed.
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