That Damn Car (Part 2)

 

This is a follow up to my post from October 6th.   This will make more sense if you read it first.

While writing that post and talking about the incident with friends, I felt a lot of sadness and anger.  After writing the post, the emotions dissipated pretty quickly.  I didn’t think about it at the time, but it shouldn’t be too surprising that writing about something and/or discussing it with friends is a good way of letting go of negative emotions.  By now, I think the event is kind of funny.

Furthermore, we’re beginning to realize that the whole incident may be a blessing in disguise.  A painful experience, but it may be for the best.  We have come up with two different scenarios that may be better for us.

Our Outback is in pretty good shape.  I always feel bad about taking it down some rutted dirt roads.  Or putting a muddy dog in the back.  Maybe it would be better (and considerably cheaper) to buy an old beat up SUV for me and give the Outback to Barbara.  We have other things we want to spend money on and stretching to buy a nice car might not be the best option for us at this time.  We would both be excited about getting a nice new car.  However, pretty soon the newness wears off and it just becomes a vehicle that gets us where we want to go.

If we are going to stretch for a car, maybe we should stretch for a car that we really want.  The car we were looking at is a hybrid.  But, we really would prefer a plug-in hybrid or an electric car.  We discussed a plug-in hybrid.  The cost is not much more than a nice hybrid.  However, the dealers have waiting lists for plug-in hybrids.  We could put our name in for one, but we would have to wait months if not a year for one to arrive.  Maybe we should put our name in for one, buy an old beat up SUV now.  When the plug-in hybrid arrives, trade in the Outback.  The outback still has a fair amount of value and would bring down the price of the new car into our budget.

One hitch to these plans is that old beat up SUVs are not as cheap as I thought.  I figured that we could get a roughly 10 year old car in decent shape with decent mileage for $5-7K.  Unfortunately those types of cars are $10+K now.   Plus, you never know what you are getting.  Some cars like that are on the verge of falling apart, with massive repair bills in the near future.  Some cars like that will run great for another 10 years with minimal problems.

Clearly, we haven’t decided what we want to do.  Barbara thinks it might be like her process for getting a new dog.  She has spent hours researching cars.  Someday we’ll be moving through a car lot and some car will call out to her.  Forget all the research and the carefully thought out scenarios!