We currently have two working cars, though with 165,000 miles and 186,000 miles on them, that could change at any time. We are pretty much done fixing the second car, unless it is a cheap repair, so we decided we should start looking for another car, just in case. Plus, we could have 5 drivers home this summer with only 2 cars. Guess who will be most inconvienced by that? Exactly!
Tom and I started last weekend. We hit the Honda dealership to check out the Pilot. We were pleasantly surprised to meet a friendly, helpful, non-pushy salesperson by the name of Tom, who showed us several vehicles even though they were preparing to close. Side note--why do car dealerships close at 6, 7, or 8 on Friday and Saturday nights? When is a working person supposed to look for a car? We liked the Pilot, but we haven't bought a car in 12 years so Tom was overwhelmed by sticker shock. We moved on to Evans Toyota and got fixed up with an equally friendly, non-pushy sales person named Erica. She was fairly new and had to check things to make sure she was giving us correct information, but that's okay. We looked at the Hilander and 4-Runner there. We liked the 4-Runner, but it's more than we want to spend. The following weekend we went out to "Auto Row" on Friday night. Every place except one had closed at 6. Fortunately, the one that was open was Fort Wayne Toyota, Kia, Whatever-Car-You-Want-To-Buy. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it was multiple makes in one. It went around the corner and down the street. Here we met a salesperson that we just didn't gel with. He was nice and helpful, but a little too desperate and their sales method didn't mesh with our buying philosophy. He showed us the Kia Sorrento, which is what we went to see, but I couldn't sit in the back seat without my knees touching the front seat so there's no way Craig, Ellen or Kelly could have sat there. Then he showed us a used GMC Acadia. It was very nice, but had more miles than we wanted and he wouldn't tell us the actual price, just that he told his manager what we were looking to spend and this is one of the cars that his manager suggested he show us. We started checking out at this point so he tried to talk us into looking at other cars. In desperation he said, "How about an Escalade? We've got an Escalade in your price range." We don't want an Escalade at any price, but one in our price range would probably have 100,000 miles on it. Our pride in our reputation would never let us drive into the church parking lot in an Escalade, though Craig (as a joke) has suggested several times that we buy one. We walked at that point. They have several cars on their website that we are interested in, but we don't like their style and don't want to deal with that salesman. We tried to look at the Ford Explorer, but they were closed.
Saturday we hit the Hyundai dealership and met Cleveland, a man nice enough to be my grandpa. Super low key and this dealership doubles the 10 year/100,000 warranty to 20 years/200,000 miles. I was pretty sure Cleveland had just sold Tom on the Veracruz, which was the roomiest car yet and the price, even new, was within our consideration. We wanted to look at the Dodge Durango so we said goodbye to Cleveland, expecting to come back. At Glenbrook Dodge we met Tyler, whose father's second cousin happens to be a former Mormon bishop in Panama City, Florida. We talked church and missions for a few minutes. He seemed well-informed. It's unimportant how that came up, but it was an interesting side note. Tyler is a young guy who, when he saw how tall we are, told us the Durango would be too small and showed us a 2009 Chrysler Aspen Hybrid. The hybrid caused both of us to frown a bit--Tom because he doesn't know much about them and is therefore skeptical of their reliability, etc., and me because hybrids are such a liberal thing to buy and so "Save the Earthish". WHAT would our friends say? However, this SUV was sized like the bigger ones (Chevy Tahoe), but priced like the smaller ones. It had the headroom of our van, though not quite as much leg room as the Veracruz. The hybrid also gets decent gas mileage. It was fully loaded, too. Literally everything that is available for this model is on it--Nav, DVD entertainment system, the tow package, everything! It's a trade-in and it's been on the lot for 30 days. They want to get rid of it and it is priced accordingly. The standard Chrysler warranty isn't as good as other car makers, but Tom got them to pick up the tab on the extended warranty (which was a ridiculous $2000). We haven't bought it yet. We wanted to do some hybrid research. They offered to let us drive it home for the weekend, but that was a little much for us. We'd rather not have the responsibility until we own it.
So, we didn't plan on buying for another month or so, but if we get the Aspen it will be ours tomorrow. It seems a little too good to be true so we keep looking for the bad egg in this deal. If we do get it, it will be the nicest car we've ever owned. I'm not quite sure I can handle that. We're the family that drives 100,000+ mile cars with missing hubcaps. How will we look people in the eye if we come home with this car? So stay tuned...even we don't know what we're doing yet.
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