Unforseen Purchase

Despite the fact that I pleaded with it to last *one* more year, my Nissan kicked the bucket this week. Last week, it started shaking when starting, and when I brought it in this Tuesday, the mechanic gave me the, "well, it's not good news. I don't know what you want to do..." You know when the mechanic, who sees every kind of car mess possible, mentions the possibility of sending the car to the Great Parking Lot in the Sky, it's bad.

Of course the stupid thing picked just about the worst moment to die. Now I'm convinced that cars can hear you when you talk about how much money is in your bank account, and act accordingly. They'd never die when you had oodles of cash floating around. Ah well. It was obvious that we'd need another car very quickly, so I went off to the Toyota dealership.

How'd I pick Toyota? Well, it's not too noble. I was picking between Nissan, our old friend, and Toyota, who showed up a lot on "dependability" and "best gas mileage" lists. I called Nissan first. The operator acted like I'd peed in her Cheerios or something. First she told me that she didn't know if they had any Sentras on the lot, and said I'd have to come down and see. I said, "well, I'm not going to come down if you don't have the car I want." Then she got all flustered and said, "of course we have Sentras, why wouldn't we have Sentras?" Yeah...did she not just tell me that she didn't know if they had Sentras? So, that was out. Then I discovered that I wouldn't even have to get on the highway to get to the Toyota dealership, which really cinched the deal, considering that my Sentra was quite obviously on its last legs.

Anyway. Long story short. I ended up picking a used '08 Corolla with 5000 miles on it. I saved a couple thousand by buying the used one. There was a used Mini Cooper that was pretty tempting, but I was feeling sensible. Here's the new ride:
They took a couple thousand for my trade-in, which was a surprise to me, considering it needed serious engine work, the back bumper was falling off, there's a dent in the front fender that I don't remember getting, the radio was cracked from my big accident in college, there was a rusty scrape on the side, the AC didn't work, and the upholstery was shot from me spilling, among other things, hot glue in the backseat. The funniest part was that the salesguy said that I obviously took good care of it. I wonder which car he was looking at. I had to pick up the new car on Thursday and I slept fitfully thinking that they were going to figure out that they gave me too much for the trade-in and change their minds.

So, goodbye Sentra. Goodbye power windows and doors and pretty blue color. Hello no more worrying about breaking down and no more repairs every three months. And hello to one more bill to add to the pile...