Behind Door #3: A NEW CAR!!!

I woke up at 4:45am thanks to D’s snoring. Dammit I swear i musta nudged him and pushed on him about 10 times. I can’t sleep. … but now that I have this migraine I’m getting tired again. But anyways… here’s the low down on our weekend thus far.

We went out today/yesterday on a mission to go car shopping then grocery shopping to fill our very empty fridge. D had put together a stack of printouts of minivans from dealerships with maps and organized them in the order we’d be going to see them. Then we hit maroone dodge first. They had a used 2003 odyssey on their lot and we looked at it, got in it, D test drove it while i babysat back at the dealership. We liked it, it handled well, was clean… (i wanted so bad to get an odyssey so that’s all i wanted to look at) but the price was in the 20k range and couldn’t seem to haggle it down fast enough. We could have still afforded that but we wanted to stay as close as possible to the bottom of our price range. After all we now have TWO cars we need to buy. The sales guy mentioned there was another odyssey at their other lot across the street that was a 2002 with less miles than the one we were looking at and had more bells and whistles still. so we went to look at it.

the price was right at around 18k, way below blue book value, only one previous owner, no surprises on carfax, it had leather interior, dvd player, dual power side doors (the kind that slide open of course), power everything, alloy wheels, 34k miles, perfect interior, so on and so forth. D took it for a test drive. Aside from the steering being a little stiff, it was good. So after a painful time agonizing over it, fretting over the ’stiff’ steering (probably due to those fat tires), haggling it down (or trying to) and dealing with a very tired, hungry, and combative 2 year old. (GOD THAT WAS HARD!!) we decided to buy it. :-D we put more than half down and after a stack of paperwork, we brought it home and piled into it and watched a little elmo’s world on the dvd player while I played with all the controls in the front. I haven’t had the pleasure of driving it yet tho because i’m not on the ins yet. (we decided to use D’s ins which i’m not on … yet)

Now begins our job of finding a final ins. co. and refinancing it. I swear dealerships do a shit job of getting good interest rates. soooo… we got ourselves a minivan and it’s sweet! wooo!! This is like a luxury vehicle for us now compared to D’s stink bucket and I still loved my honda but that’s no longer something we can have. I’m still feeling nervous about this purchase tho because I’ve never bought a used car before and I’m just so afraid something is going to go wrong. I’m so afraid it will have mechanical problems but thankfully against what we thought was money wasted we decided to get an extended warranty on it for 3 years. anything goes wrong the dealership will fix it. sigh…. I guess I’m just upset that we have a car payment now.. But the minivan is still nice as hell and I’m so happy we have it. As long as it’s in solid condition (we’re going to have it looked at by our mechanic later today) I will be happy and hopefully stop being afraid.

I’ll post a pic of it soon. but it’s basically your standard silver honda odyssey you see on the streets every day. :D Oh and my favorite part is that the 3rd row of seats folds down into the floor … NOW WE CAN HAUL LARGE STUFF! AND GO TO YARD SALES AND ANTIQUE STORES AND *BUY* STUFF! AND BRING THEM HOME!!!! LOLLLL!!!!! FOR YEARS I SOOOO WANTED TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT!!! ok, nuff yelling… ;)

Next, we go shopping for the second car. Not as important as this one was, we just want something in good condition mechanically and cheep! because we’ll be paying that one in full with the money we get for our 2 totalled cars.. (thank you wilma) Hell no I ain’t having 2 car payments! pffft… I rather skateboard to work than have 2 car payments!

Hide Comments
  1. squeaky19 posted the following on November 7, 2005 at 8:30 am.

    Good luck with the car. Personally I’ve had great luck with used cars, as long as you get it from a reputable dealership you usually wont have a problem. Those “buy here pay here” places are where you really get the lemons from. The reason being is that the cars on those lots are usually bought from auctions where the dealers send the cars the trade-ins that dont meet their quality standards.

    And about the snoring. Screw the nudging, wake his ass up and make him roll over or something, thats what I do to Tanya when she snores too loudly .. hehe.

    Reply to squeaky19
  2. whisperkitty posted the following on November 7, 2005 at 8:38 am.

    lol cute! i like those odesseys. They are nice! I have had bad experience(s) with maroone, so hopefully these people treat you good, and make sure that you do get the mini van checked out before your lemon period expires. (not meaning to be a downer everyone has good and bad experiences with every dealer).

    As for the snoring, i never snore ~lewks around suspeciously~, however if i *did*, i probably would be kicked off the bed and have to go to the couch. but i wouldn’t know anything about that…..

    ….

    Reply to whisperkitty
  3. grocerynipples posted the following on November 7, 2005 at 10:47 am.

    Congrats! If needed a minivan, that’s the kind i would want. I just love honda!

    Reply to grocerynipples
  4. Tania (digsite) posted the following on November 7, 2005 at 11:34 am.

    man, nudging is usually enough to wake him up and get him to turn around, but goddam he was in a deep sleep and kept turning back. at one point he was about 3 inches from my face. oh god, i can’t sleep with someone breathing on my face. :-o

    Reply to Tania (digsite)
  5. squeaky19 posted the following on November 7, 2005 at 11:36 am.

    He’s lucky .. my wife would have beat me with her pillow until I stopped snoring.

    Reply to squeaky19
  6. Tania (digsite) posted the following on November 7, 2005 at 11:44 am.

    our experience (and this is our first with maroone) has been an OK one so far. I guess the real test will be when/if something goes wrong with the car.

    we have to take the van in to them soon to have the steering looked at and have a couple missing headrests replaced. But we’re already taking it to our mechanic anyway (D’s on his way there now in fact). To me, a good relationship with a dealership is one where you don’t have to EVER go back to the dealership after everything is finalized.

    Reply to Tania (digsite)
  7. Tania (digsite) posted the following on November 7, 2005 at 11:47 am.

    oh man I love honda too. We might even get a civic for car #2 but still keeping options open.

    Reply to Tania (digsite)

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