John and Nan’s Blog

departure from my usual format…

About 10 days ago, I got the notion of getting a new/different vehicle. It started as a suggestion to give our current car to Leah. A Mercury Grand Marquis is a big gas guzzler, but we thought we could give it to Leah and could afford to buy something else for ourselves. Since Leah’s move to Pittsburgh, she finds that a car is necessary. But Leah and Darren decided that they would like to buy a Hyundai – because jeez, what a swell warranty.

Even though Leah didn’t need our big gas guzzler, the idea of replacing our car somehow took root and I got excited. Ah consumerism. I’m a sucker for shiny objects. And I LOVE a research project! I decided what kinds of vehicles I wanted to look at, presented my ideas to John, got his agreement, and commenced the buying frenzy.

By Thursday of this week, I decided I wanted a Honda Fit Sport. Consumer Reports (and everybody else too) is very enthusiastic about the Fit. Odd name, though. This weekend was the culmination – didn’t take long, did it? We did a little unnecessary driving to a dealership that was supposed to have a large inventory, only to discover that NO, they had absolutely nothing for us to even test-drive. Then we went to the dealership we should have gone to. They had a few Fits, we drove one, we bought it. We didn’t get as much for our gas guzzler as we had hoped. It’s now probably on it’s way to a future life as a cab. The whole adventure took hours and hours, but we’re happy. Except for the part about the car payment.  And one of the best parts – the car is purple! Sort of. Remember what I said before about me and shiny objects? Well, there are some options I want on the car, but there wasn’t enough time to get that done yesterday. So after the accessories arrive at the dealership, we need to take it back to get the shiny stuff I want. And then it will be like being new all over again!

It’s new, it’s little, it will get great gas mileage, it’s shiny.  We haven’t bought a new car since about 1998.

–Nan