Vehicle Shopping

We never made it to the place we had top on our list for cheap cars yesterday, but that's OK. We still test-drove plenty of vehicles in & around town. Some turned out to be wonderful, but overpriced... and some turned out to be complete disasters.

One turned out to be OK, and only $200 more than we wanted to spend. Which is do-able. It's a '97 Subaru Legacy... wagon [actual photo from the dealership]. Subies are extremely reliable. It's a 4-cyl so it will be excellent on gas, and it's 4WD which will be excellent in the winter. And, I hate to admit, having a wagon will be nice for mom-things like strollers and groceries and whatnot... and even trips to the beach with a cooler and whatever else. Tiegan & the babe could get out of the sun by just snuggling up in the hatch of the wagon with a blanket. Here I am, already thinking about the future with this car we haven't even purchased yet.

The first one we test drove was the best we had seen or driven all day. Unfortunately, it was $1,000 higher than we wanted, and rightfully so. It's a Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo and it was worth every penny they wanted for it, so we walked away without arguing too much. I tried not to get attached or disappointed (like when we couldn't get financed for that Grand Prix GTP Comp G a while back, even though they said it was done & let us take it for the weekend). But it was still a little difficult to walk away, knowing that a measley $1,000 that we just didn't have was holding us back from this vehicle that was so much better/safer than the rest.

I'm just so undecided. Jason is telling me what he likes/dislikes and seems to pretty much be leaving the major decisions up to me. It's hard, because I know we're going to end up with a car that has flaws. We just have to choose the lesser of the evils, I guess. I'm glad we have Jason's dad around to look under the hood. At least we'll know right off the bat what needs to be worked on and how soon, so we can compare future fix-it scenarios. Maybe this one car will need a new belt in a few months, but this other car is going to need a new suspension. Which one is more worth fixing, for the vehicle it is? All these questions.

I think shopping for a cheap car is harder than shopping new. All we want to do is make sure it's going to be safe, comfortable and reliable for the next year or two until we can afford to upgrade. Yikes.

P.S. I even took my camera (the XTi and 17-40) with us to get pictures of every car we were considering, since their websites didn't have photos of everything. The only photo I managed to take all day was this one.

Boy, was it a good breakfast though.