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Have had many cars in my driving life. Only new ones were:
1979 VW Rabbit diesel L
1995 Ford Ranger XLT
2015 Toyota RAV4 Limited
2018 Toyota RAV4 Adventure
2018 Toyota RAV4 Adventure, (replacement for first '18 RAV which was rear-ended/totaled at only 5k miles)
39 - only have owned one brand new car (my current 2022 Cadillac CT4 Blackwing). The rest of them between my wife and I have been gently used, less than 20k miles and 2 - 3 years old.
When my wife's minivan goes, we'll likely get a used car again. With my current car, I was originally looking at used cars, but with the prices the way they were in the last year, I wasn't dropping that kind of money unless I was getting exactly what I want.
I’ve had six cars, four new. I’m 63. We were the drive it till they die people.
My first car was I think it was a dodge charger. It was a POS. It would break in such a way that if I had been a guy I probably could’ve figured it out. Because it was never anything really enginey. The biggest thing was the gearshift would simply disengage. So if you were in drive you were stuck in drive. If you were stuck in park you were stuck in park. That thing stranded me so many times that the last time it did it right before we got married, I told my husband to be, we’re getting a new car. He said to me don’t you think we should discuss this? And I said we just did and I hung up on him. We still got married in two weeks. It lasted for 40 years.
I went out and bought a Nissan Sentra. It didn’t even have carpet. It had like a vinyl type of a flooring that was flexible. Anyway I taught my husband how to drive a stick shift in that car. And that’s all he drove until he died. That car lasted nine years until something really major happened to the engine and the fix was way more than the car was worth. By the way I name all my cars, this car was Sheldon.
The next car was Bert. Bert was a Toyota Corolla. great car. It really looks like one of those small Mercedes with a little nipped in back in trunk area. That’s when I noticed car started really looking alike.
That car was about 12 years old I think, when I was hit from behind by a Nissan pathfinder and pushed into a Mercedes. During a five car pileup. The guy in the Pathfinder got out and announce to everybody I’m so sorry this was my fault, I was talking to my girls in the backseat. which led me too…
Sam. Sam was a Saturn SC one. Worst car ever. I think we bought it in 1992, it was technically used. Saturn at the time had a program that if you bought a car and brought it in within so many miles you could upgrade and get the full amount of your car put towards the upgrade. And the girl liked it so much she brought it back and bought a larger Saturn. Once again, stick shift. We were in San Francisco we had just pulled over to the side of the street to park. My husband’s foot was on the break and he was reaching for the emergency brake. The car was off in neutral. The brakes let go. He managed to curb it, but we still hit a brand new Subaru Forrester. She wasn’t around, we left her name and number and told her to call us. The brakes failed again on the way home twice, the next day we took it back to the Saturn dealership and they could not replicate the problem and they had it for a month. And there was nothing wrong with the brakes. They kept trying to bring up well maybe you did ask and all of the things they kept bringing up were things that would happen if it wasn’t a stick shift and every time they say that I’d say but this is a stick shift you don’t do that with a stick shift. I never felt safe in that car. After we started our business in 98, that car it was a sedan, and it was not practical for our janitorial business. We needed a hatchback to haul vacuum cleaners and tube lights and all the stuff. So I convinced my husband to sell this car and let me buy a Toyota matrix. We sold it to a friend whose kid wrecked it on his first drive. He wrecked it a couple more times because he’s the kind of person that just knows that he can drive and do 17 other things other than drive. The last time there was a landslide and a tree landed on it so that car is now out of commission.
The Toyota matrix was wonderful. His name was Mickey after Micky Dolenz. For 16 years that car served me very well in the janitorial business. Then my husband suffered a seizure and wrecked his truck. When someone has a seizure they’re no longer permitted to drive, so I had to drive my husband to and from work in San Francisco, up and down those hills and a clutch. Also having no idea what is actually wrong with my husband, and also not wanting to go back to work and our business because I wanted to be done. Well, since the truck was toast we decided that I would get a new car, and he would take Mickey when he got better. You’ll know where this is going right?
Then came Thorkelson, the Kia Niro. my first automatic in 38 years. I love that car. I mean I love love that car. My stress level went way down. And that’s really good because my husband was diagnosed with the blessed brain tumor and I lost him. I’ve had that car for four years, it doesn’t even have 30,000 miles on it.
I did forget to say — because my sister-in-law showed up and we went out to lunch — the reasons that I buy new is because the two old cars that I had were absolutely nothing but trouble. It was one thing after the other. After that losing the brakes multiple times over two days issue, I never ever trusted that car again. And since we are specifically talking about me, I did not add my husband‘s cars, and his luck with buying old cars which was never ever good.
My sister has only purchased used cars and has had no trouble with them whatsoever.
I am not somebody who needs all the gizmos and the whiz-bangs, my preference is to drive a small car because I don’t know where the big cars are on the road when I drive them. That takes me out of my comfort zone. So my cars are never the most expensive thing on the lot. They’re also not the cheapest. And I do my best to find them at a good price, and try to negotiate a better price. I tend to also pay cash. I have yet to spend over $25,000 for a brand new car. The last car I bought, the Kia Niro, I did finance because I thought it was a better deal for our business. When my accountant informed me otherwise, I paid it off.
__________________ Solly says — Be nice!
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Solly says — Be nice!
