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Sometimes I Do and Sometimes I Don't

For awhile Shawn and I have been talking about the need for a new car. We knew that my poor '93 Mazda Mx3 wasn't going to last very much longer. The poor thing had some issues and probably wasn't taken care of well by it's previous owners. I said I'd drive that car to the ground, and truth be told, I pretty much did. The next time something went wrong we knew that it probably wouldn't have been worth our while to get it fixed. It was my first car though, and it will always have a special place in my heart.

Anyway, like I said we'd been talking about getting a new car for quite some time. We decided to make a list of cars that we were interested in and go take a look at them. Sunday we were going to Trader Joe's in Burien (for plantain chips supplements) and there are a number of car dealerships that we need to pass on the way there. We figured we'd stop in at a few and see what they had to offer. I had every intention of just going to take a look.

First we went to the Toyota/Scion dealership to look at the Toyota Prius and the Scion xA. We really had no plans on buying a new car because we thought it would be a bit out of our price range. Not to mention new cars depreciate as soon as you drive them off the lot. We didn't really look at the Prius much as we were drawn to the xA. We met up with a sales guy who explained to us how Scion purchasing works. He said that they come pretty much as a base model and you get to add on the extra stuff that you want. No pressure. We didn't really believe it, but decided that we'd take it for a test drive anyway. It was cute. We really liked it, but of course we weren't ready to make a purchase. We took a car from the guy and went down the road to a Dodge dealership which had a VW Beetle and Golf that we wanted to look at. The Beetle was kind of on the top of Shawn's list, but after we took it for a drive, we realized that we didn't like it at all. The dashboard was waaaay too long and it was just not a comfortable car. We then took the Golf for a drive and it was nice, but it was used and there was this icky smell in it. It smelled like cleaning supplies used at a camp or something. I just did not like it at all, and it was only a few hundred dollars less than the Scion and it was a 2002. The dealer guy there was super pushy too. He was very about selling us a car, and was all "let's see what we can do for you". Shawn was kind of interested in seeing what exactly he could do, but I was having none of it. I told the guy that we weren't ready to buy a car today and thanked him for his time and of we went to finish our shopping.

Throughout the afternoon Shawn and I went back and forth on the pros and cons of buying a car. New vs used. Now vs later. I sat down and went to the Scion website and picked out the car I wanted, and came up with an amount. Shawn and I looked at each other and decided that since we're not planning on having kids for at least 3-5 years (if ever) nor are we planning on buying a new house for that long, now was the time. So we cleaned out the car and off we went with our list of options in hand.

It was the easiest car buying experience ever! The sales guy talked about some of the options, but we didn't feel under any pressure to go for anything that he said. They had a model there in the color that we wanted with the side curtain airbags (like we wanted) so we decided to go for it. Our xA is in flint mica with the side curtain airbags, rear spoiler (I had to do it!), regular cd player, arm rest and 10 spoke wheel covers. The rear spoiler will be added next week sometime and we got all the other stuff added yesterday. We're totally loving it. Both Shawn and I have never owned a brand new car before and it's quite nice. Sure, it's depreciated in value quite a bit, but it has a warranty and we plan on modifying it a bit (which should up the resale value). We love how the Scions are basically built for people to modify them. We're already planning on adding a sun roof and getting the windows tinted. Then, who knows..

posted by Erin - Wednesday, April 26, 2006