Buying a car… What the ferk am I doing?!

 I want to preface this entry with two things:

1)  I have actually bought 5, no… 6 vehicles in my life.  (4 cars, 1 truck, and a motorcycle) not to mention I have accompanied my dad to buy that last 4 cars they bought.  So, I’m not new to this.

2)  I’m not looking for advice.  Just venting frustration.

ONWARD!

(I’d also like to say quickly that I’m listening to I Vespri Siciliani by Verdi, which is the opera I’m covering this summer at Caramoor.  And can I say, this opera is BEAUTIFUL, but dear lord, this is by far the longest role I will have ever learned.  Oy…)

ONWARD! (for realz, yo!)

I don’t know how much I told you all about what happened.  Since I moved down here, Abby and I have been sharing her 2000 Honda Odyssey (mini-van).  Almost immediately after getting down here the check engine light came on, which I knew couldn’t be good… but we were so broke there was nothing we could do about it.  (We couldn’t even afford to have it looked at.)  Well, in about November we noticed the transmission was having some issues… and to be honest it was acting exactly like my (HEY WAIT!  5 cars… so 7 vehicles) Honda Accord I had years ago.  In that car the transmission started slipping, then it would have difficulties going from 1st to 2nd, then pretty soon it’s not shifting at all without serious issues.

Well, the van had been doing that more and more until finally the week before I got home it basically died.  Abby couldn’t even get it to go in reverse.  So I rented her a car for two days (because we had the family reunion that weekend) and she took a cab to get it for the three days.

We got home that Monday (three weeks ago today) and rented another car with the idea that we’d have it until we got a car (I was thinking a week tops).  Granted, we haven’t been as proactive as we could have been, but seriously, dragging three kids to look at cars is… not something we wanted to do.  Plus we’ve been snippy a bit over this process because what we’ve wanted has been so drastically different.  But that’s not what I came here.

The more we searched, be it Craigslist, driving to local dealers (and not so local dealers), everything we drove was a piece of shit…  So much so that I did not want to spend near the money they were asking, be it by owner or dealer.  (I mean, what the hell?!  Some of these people had their cars priced OVER their "Excellent" rating on Kelley Blue Book.*  One kid (I say kid, he was probably 23 or so) had his girlfriend’s Saturn Vue listed for $1000 over Excellent condition in KBB, and yet it was in Okay condition or less.  So I offered him the low and he got offended.  When I quoted KBB he just shrugged.  Been very frustrating…)

But to top it all off, the more we looked at older cars the more I was noticing that they weren’t holding up as long.  While in WA state 3 of those car purchases I had to make were snap decisions.  My car died, and so I borrowed my parent’s car, or had my dad come with and within two days we’d have a new car.  But the selection was also much larger, and older cars were in far better condition.  That’s when my Abby and my dad pointed out that the sun, heat and salt air here takes it toll on cars and they just don’t hold up as well.

So… there’s that.

After two weeks of searching and many cars we could have afforded, but none I felt comfortable buying, we were just going to have the van fixed.

Here’s why we weren’t going to in the first place… The van, in best condition is only worth $3700… in not good condition, which it’s currently at (if the transmission was fine) is probably $2900.  It was going to cost $2800 to fix the van.  We had the guy that was going to do it (works out of the same business park as our studio) and he plugged it in to find out that the exhaust system is… well… fucked.  (No wonder we were getting 10-12mpg.)  

Which would have bumped fixing the van over $4000 easy.  Which is more than it’s worth, so even if we fixed it and sold it later, we’d be taking a huge loss.

Two weeks into looking, we’ve made the decision to fix it**, and I run an errand and come across a small independent dealer I hadn’t noticed before, and it’s maybe 3 miles from the apartment.  I stopped by his small lot and looked them over and in the 5 minutes I talked to Dave I realized he was the real thing.  A no bullshit car dealer.  He honestly wants to help you, and he seems to do a lot of referral business which made me think this might be where to get a car.

We found the car we liked, a 2005 Kia Sorento, buy while driving it, it died on us and we had to coast back into his lot.  They found out the problem and have been fixing it.  In the mean time we’ve driving just about every other car on the lot we like, and they just got a 2008 Saturn Vue in that we want to test drive.  

However, we still don’t have a car.  >.<

But, Dave is really trying to help us, we have the down payment ready, we’re trading in the van, and the loans have been approved, so now we’re just waiting on the vehicle.

That’s my story, and I apologize for another SUPER long entry.

In other news I’ve been sick for all three weeks I’ve been home and it’s been miserable.  I got a cold the day I landed, had it for a week and half, and just as I was feeling better it started over… the exact same cold.  So ready to be not sick.  The worst part is I had to cancel an audition with St. Petersburg Opera, and now I have Pensacola this Saturday.  Here’s hoping my voice comes back by then.

However, I will also be singing for Tampa Opera on May 20th, so that’s exciting. 😀

Anyway, I’ll leave it at that.  Hope you all are well!

– Noah

* – Just in case you don’t know what Kelley Blue Book is, which I hope most of you do… here’s a brief history.  Basically it has be come the word for how much used cars should be worth.  They’re work is tireless and their COMPLETELY FREE website is one of the best tools when selling or buying a used car.  They are completely independent and have been very trustworthy.

** – I’d like to point out that this whole time we’ve had the rental car.  It’s a 2011 Ford Taurus.  I’ve always hated Taurus, and when they told me that’s what we were getting I sighed and said okay.  Sure enough 2 weeks into driving this car I LOVE IT.  I mentioned it to someone, can’t remember who, and their response was "Yeah!  This isn’t your dad’s Taurus."  lol   Needless to say, damn it’s a good car.  I already loved the Fusion, and now this car has shown me that Ford made some difficult decisions, but they were the right ones and they have become a better company because of it.

However, we’ve been renting it for 3 weeks and it’s cost us $1000.  *headdesk*  Today I’m taking it back and switching it for a Ford Fusion because I have to drive to Pensacola this Friday for an audition.  Hopefully we’ll have a car by then cause Abby has a show on Saturday.