Quest To Replace Old Blue--Finale (AKA Thank you Obama and my fellow taxpayers!)

Previously on The Quest, our heroine had decided on a car, but had held off buying it because of lack of funds. With the knowledge of what she wanted, her only obstacle was money. Will she finally be able to replace her once trusty steed with something a little more shiny? Will she like it? Find out in the final installment of The Quest to Replace Old Blue:

Well, it's been almost a year since I first started looking/thinking about buying a new car. It has been almost 9 months since I had sold Old Blue, and while juggling schedules to arrange cars between my family was a small annoyance occasionally, it wasn't too bad. I was fully prepared to keep it up, too (my family, probably not).

Then, recently, Congress decides to pass a bill for a "Cash for Clunkers" program. I had always planned on trading my family's Expedition, which my brother used and lovingly referred to as "The Beast" (you can't tell in the picture, but the driver's side window was guerilla glued shut, and the leather inside was all torn up) to help me in buying my car. But with this program and talks of it running out of money, now was as good a time as any to buy my new car. I had a sizeable amount of money saved up to put a reasonable down payment on the car.

The timing/decision-making process to buy the car now rather than later literally took a day. On a Tuesday, I had heard about how the program was running out of money and discussed with my family that night about purchasing my car sometime that week. My dad and I went to the dealer on Wednesday after work and negotiated a price. Then Thursday after work, we finished the paperwork, made the trade, and drove off the lot in my new Beauty.



It happened so fast, and believe me I (and my family) was scrambling around the house/emailing/faxing to get all the right forms and necessary paperwork. (The government requires a bunch of extra papers, e.g. a year's proof of insurance, a year's proof of registration, etc., for the CARS program.) The whole experience of negotiating and working out the loan/financing was enlightening (car salesmen really are tricky folks).

So, it's official; I have purchased (well ok, started making payments) on my first car. I haven't christened it yet, but I'm open to suggestions (perhaps New Blue?). (The car is Glacier blue; it's kind of hard to tell in the pictures.) I feel I need some more time with it to really know and understand it. We need some more time to get to know each other. But, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


THE END