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Apr. 2nd, 2008 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogThe car I'm probably going to find myself driving (that is, I've been approved for financing on and, barring anything unforeseen, will buy when it arrives from the other lot on Thursday or Friday), is nearly new.
Well, I guess that's a relative term. I, myself, have never owned a car with less than 200,000 miles on it, and my last two were upwards of 300,000 and averaged almost twenty years old between them. And I have no idea how many miles the old '79 F100 I used to have had on it; probably nearly as many.
The car I'm buying is only four years old. It only has 76,000 miles on it. And, I have to admit, there's a part of me that feels like by buying something relatively new from a place like CarMax, I'm buying into the consumer culture that I've eschewed for so long.
But it's not that I just want a newer, shinier toy. To be honest, if I could be sure it was as reliable, I'd be just as happy with the cosmetically questionable '90 Miata that Juan sent me a link to last night, or really, anything small and with good gas mileage. But I'm not a mechanic, and despite the fact that I know one, and could be pretty sure about how well he'd check out a car I was looking at buying, can you be sure that it's not going to crap out? I've had really good luck with my cars, but then, I know their history. The '83 Delta 88 came from my parents. The '93 Dakota I bought from the original owners, friends of my parents. Even the KIA that Andrea bought from Posi's car hookup, Bob, has been a pretty nicely reliable. Would I be as lucky buying something from a private seller? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
I hope it's not consumerist of me to buy something newer, and with a warranty. I like to think it's just a reasoned expenditure of money. And it's not as though I'm buying something huge and wasteful; I looked through the offerings and got something with about the best gas mileage I could find. Admittedly, there was a Ford Focus hatchback that was a little cheaper, and had just a little bit better mileage, but only one or two miles per gallon is a small enough difference that I chose the better cargo room of the vehicle I got approved for. Besides, I'm not sure how much such a small difference in rated mileage will actually show up in real life. I could save more than that just by being careful about how I drive (which I'm planning to be).
So what am I (probably) buying? Well, it's a 2004 Chevrolet Aveo hatchback (their "five door") with a 1.6 liter dual overhead cam engine, an automatic transmission (hey, it's what they had), and 76,000 miles on it. I'm really nervous about this. I've never driven something this new. I keep worrying that I'm somehow going to break it, or damage it, or something. I'm going to go for either the 2 year 20,000 mile or the 3 year 30,000 mile warranty. And, amazingly enough, the payments are going to be rather less than we were spending on the KIA, though we were paying extra on the KIA to pay it off early (which I'll probably do with the Aveo too).
It seems a little odd to me that I'm buying a Chevy instead of something from an Asian car maker, but this is just another example of how globalized the marketplace is becoming. When Daewoo went under, GM bought up a lot of their assets, including the production of the Daewoo Kalos, which, rebadged and slightly redesigned, is now in the states as, yes, the Chevy Aveo. So I actually get to have the cute little Daewoo that I've been pining for ever since seeing that little grey egg at a dealer's lot on Sheridan road in Illinois with Andrea on our last car search when we were trying to replace her Mercury. It's even, basically, the same model! How cool is that?
I'm really relieved, not just to have the car search over (though that's a weight off my mind), but to have the financial uncertainty over. I was getting stressed out every time I'd look at Quicken and at my bank's transaction log because I just had no idea how much I was going to be spending on a car or how to budget and plan for the future. Now that that's settled, and once I get the taxes paid, I can start being more organized about finances again and building up savings.
Anyway, that's the update. I need to get together proof of income and the cash for the down payment, and then I'm going to go out to Carmax once it shows up and, well, buy it, I guess. Wish me luck.
Oh- I almost forgot. Gas mileage on this car should be around 30 miles to the gallon. Nice.
Well, I guess that's a relative term. I, myself, have never owned a car with less than 200,000 miles on it, and my last two were upwards of 300,000 and averaged almost twenty years old between them. And I have no idea how many miles the old '79 F100 I used to have had on it; probably nearly as many.
The car I'm buying is only four years old. It only has 76,000 miles on it. And, I have to admit, there's a part of me that feels like by buying something relatively new from a place like CarMax, I'm buying into the consumer culture that I've eschewed for so long.
But it's not that I just want a newer, shinier toy. To be honest, if I could be sure it was as reliable, I'd be just as happy with the cosmetically questionable '90 Miata that Juan sent me a link to last night, or really, anything small and with good gas mileage. But I'm not a mechanic, and despite the fact that I know one, and could be pretty sure about how well he'd check out a car I was looking at buying, can you be sure that it's not going to crap out? I've had really good luck with my cars, but then, I know their history. The '83 Delta 88 came from my parents. The '93 Dakota I bought from the original owners, friends of my parents. Even the KIA that Andrea bought from Posi's car hookup, Bob, has been a pretty nicely reliable. Would I be as lucky buying something from a private seller? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
I hope it's not consumerist of me to buy something newer, and with a warranty. I like to think it's just a reasoned expenditure of money. And it's not as though I'm buying something huge and wasteful; I looked through the offerings and got something with about the best gas mileage I could find. Admittedly, there was a Ford Focus hatchback that was a little cheaper, and had just a little bit better mileage, but only one or two miles per gallon is a small enough difference that I chose the better cargo room of the vehicle I got approved for. Besides, I'm not sure how much such a small difference in rated mileage will actually show up in real life. I could save more than that just by being careful about how I drive (which I'm planning to be).
So what am I (probably) buying? Well, it's a 2004 Chevrolet Aveo hatchback (their "five door") with a 1.6 liter dual overhead cam engine, an automatic transmission (hey, it's what they had), and 76,000 miles on it. I'm really nervous about this. I've never driven something this new. I keep worrying that I'm somehow going to break it, or damage it, or something. I'm going to go for either the 2 year 20,000 mile or the 3 year 30,000 mile warranty. And, amazingly enough, the payments are going to be rather less than we were spending on the KIA, though we were paying extra on the KIA to pay it off early (which I'll probably do with the Aveo too).
It seems a little odd to me that I'm buying a Chevy instead of something from an Asian car maker, but this is just another example of how globalized the marketplace is becoming. When Daewoo went under, GM bought up a lot of their assets, including the production of the Daewoo Kalos, which, rebadged and slightly redesigned, is now in the states as, yes, the Chevy Aveo. So I actually get to have the cute little Daewoo that I've been pining for ever since seeing that little grey egg at a dealer's lot on Sheridan road in Illinois with Andrea on our last car search when we were trying to replace her Mercury. It's even, basically, the same model! How cool is that?
I'm really relieved, not just to have the car search over (though that's a weight off my mind), but to have the financial uncertainty over. I was getting stressed out every time I'd look at Quicken and at my bank's transaction log because I just had no idea how much I was going to be spending on a car or how to budget and plan for the future. Now that that's settled, and once I get the taxes paid, I can start being more organized about finances again and building up savings.
Anyway, that's the update. I need to get together proof of income and the cash for the down payment, and then I'm going to go out to Carmax once it shows up and, well, buy it, I guess. Wish me luck.
Oh- I almost forgot. Gas mileage on this car should be around 30 miles to the gallon. Nice.
