Monday, January 15, 2007

It's T-Day

The time has come, the husband said, to talk of many things,
Of sales and slips and purchase tax, of tags and warranties...
And why not buy a car today-
A Toyota, please!

(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

Update:

That Corolla S mentioned in a previous post was our goal. We drove out of town, in the rain and dark, to go meet up with the salesguy. I'm not getting into his tactics because anyone who's ever dealt with a car salesman knows what that's like. I am a bit peeved that I told him if the offer I made over the phone wasn't going to be accepted, I didn't want to waste the trip... and we wasted the trip. We used gas we didn't need to use and spent money on dinner that we didn't need to spend. And we took my dad along... his job was to sit and glare at the salesman and make pointed remarks, which he did quite well. :-) On the flip side, we wasted an hour and a half of the salesman's time and he isn't getting a commission tonight. That's small consolation though... I came home cold, wet, tired, and with no car.

Oh well. Learning experience noted. This car wasn't meant to be ours... maybe the next one will be!

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Midseason Report

Hi everyone! All two of you, that is!
It's supposedly the middle of winter, the season of no car shows and not much traveling or photos or sightings. But winter hasn't hit yet, so I thought I'd post something in the interim.

I'm not complaining, of course. As much as I love snow, I don't want to drive in it. Mountains without guiderails + curves + snow = clench factor 7.5. Add in idiots who haven't learned not to hit their brakes while going downhill, especially in front of people like me who drive big heavy trucks and do not brake for ANYthing, plus the one genius who believes that all road snow with no tire tracks is his own personal passing lane simply because he owns a 4x4 SUV, and the CF increases to 9.

I've done the Buick Ballet on ice before... slid around in the snow... slid backwards downhill in a truck once, lacking enough traction to climb until we put an old fridge in the back... and I've gone back after the snow melted to retrieve parts of that same truck after one of the aforementioned idiots braked in front of my husband and he ran the beast up the side of a mountain instead of over the other car. Not kidding... when spring finally rolled around in April, we were driving through the Narrows... I hollered at Hubby to stop. He did, and I ran back to pick up my missing mudflap, two spare belts and a radiator hose that were in the bed, and one Chevy hubcap. They'd been there along the road since December.

The Buick and Frankentruck are both gone now. One became a parts donor to two other trucks and the other sits down the road at the service station with a for sale sign on it. I traded it for a new set of tires for Hubby's truck. I now drive our baby, beautiful Bruce the Bronco, who just turned 11 and still turns heads. He's getting a little broken in, finally... got a gouge down the right quarter panel from a metal pipe sticking out of the ground and a few stone chips along the bottom of the body. I do love looking at that truck, though.

You may recall my Great Car Hunt of 2006... with Hubby's job change, this has been extended to 2007. We found "my" Toyota this past weekend... Hub has liked the new-style Corolla S (for me, not for him) since he first saw one, and there is a zippy indigo blue one at the Yota dealer with a sunroof, CD player, and a stick-shift. Of course, the price is a couple grand over our budget. And of course we went home past the Subie dealer whereupon I remembered I also wanted a Baja. Let's not even get started on the Impala SS at the third lot we passed... obviously, the indecisiveness of '06 came along for the ride too. *Sigh*

Remember the obnoxiously-minty-green Cougar I was waffling about? My step-sister moved here and absconded with it. Good for her... a car got ME to stay here, maybe it will work for her! Then again, she isn't the fanatic that I am. A car (or in my case, a man who likes cars) is a nice incentive all the same. I hope she sticks around.

SIGHtings: Few and far between. A GM dealer out in Lewisburg had a '65 Buick LeSabre out front, with a note on the dash saying "clean for show." Nice... it looked like an original survivor. And there was this one for sale down the road from the Buick:
See? The weather isn't even threatening enough to tuck the beauties in the garage for the winter. And this one is a beauty!

Till next time!