New Wheels
My wife's car is old and it's a Chevy. My car is old but it's a Honda and will probably out live me. The water pump on my wife's car started leaking (actually it was more like it was vommitting) so I had it replaced at a cost of $400. And that was pretty cheap compared to the last time it needed service. About a year earlier, we took it to the Chevy dealership for a leak in a 4 inch hose that connects the radiator to the engine block. The part costs about $15 but they charge $160/hr for labor at the stealership dealership and they have a minimum of 1 1/2 hours of labor costs. It ended up costing me about $300. I was pissed. So to get a little more to the point, it was time to get my wife a new car.
Anyone who knows me knows that I take a long time to make a decision. I would rather miss out on an opportunity then rush into something and end up regretting it. The bigger the decision, the more time I will take. (You don't want to know how long it took my wife and I to find our house.) Considering that a car is the second largest purchase that I will make, I wanted to be very sure about it before I made a decision. I do so much research that I usually end up knowing more about the cars than the person trying to sell it to me.
My wife is a vegetarian librarian from UC Berkeley. No joke. So getting a big V8 powered SUV isn't an option not that I was thinking about getting one anyway. Initially, we were looking to get a hybrid and were deciding between the Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius. We started looking for a car last summer when gas prices were $4.50/gallon. At that time, the Prius was selling like crazy with a huge markup. The Civic was already a lot cheaper and you could negotiate the price so we concentrated more on the Civic. I managed to get a quote from a salesman at Gilroy Honda for about $50 below invoice. It seemed like a great deal considering a used Civic Hybrid with 10,000 miles on it was selling for just about the same amount. I think the guy who quoted me that amount realized that he could sell the car for a lot more to someone else and instead of keeping his word, he decided to completely ignore me. I would call him and he would give a bunch of BS and say he would call me back and then never call. Eventually I gave up on him. The guy was a jerk.
I've always liked the Mini Cooper. It's a small, fun car and at the same time, it gets pretty good gas mileage. If you read my blog regularly you might remember the used car salesman that tried to sell us a Mini Cooper. That Mini was pretty nice. If it weren't for the jerk off salesman, I just might have bought it. It was a good thing that I didn't though. They were asking $24,800 and they gave me a bunch of crap and didn't really budge on the price much at all. It was a 2006 Mini Cooper S with 24,000 miles on it. It was the older body style with the older supercharged engine. After that, we were kinda soured on the idea of buying a car and put it off for a few months.
When we started thinking about it again, we looked at the Fit and the new Honda Insight Hybrid. The Fit was not bad but didn't have nearly the power that I would have liked. We didn't even try the Insight since the salesman told us that it was going to be even more underpowered than the Fit. Besides that, the Insight was just plain ugly.
We went over to the Mini dealer to see if a new Mini would be a good option. The big problem with a new Mini is the cost of the options. The base car might be pretty well priced but once you add the options, the car's price jumps through the roof. The ones that we looked at were all over $26,000 and none of them had all the options that we wanted (Actually, I was the one that wanted all the options). To add to that, the dealership was still marking the cars up by $2000. The salesman that showed us the cars wasn't pushy at all. He did scare the crap out of us when we went over to their secondary lot to look at the available cars. The guy drove like a mad man. The one good thing about our visit is that we both decided that we liked the Mini even though the size might be a problem later down the road but we left the dealership feeling somewhat confused.
I could tell my wife was getting kind of excited about the idea of getting a Mini. I knew that she liked it which made me want to get it for her even more. When I would talk to her, she would tell me that she was leaning toward the new Prius mainly because it was the more practial choice. The Mini was the more emotional choice. It was pretty clear when I could tell that she was getting excited when I mentioned buying a Mini. I started doing a lot more research on the Mini. I configured a new on on the Mini web site trying to see what combination of options would make it reasonably priced without making me feel like I got the stripped down version. It didn't really work. I convinced myself that navigation wasn't worth the cost. I would rarely use it and in a year or two, the software would be out of date and the user interface would start looking old. Even without the fancy $2000 Navigation system, the car was still right around the $30,000 mark. I couldn't pay that much money for a big go kart. Off to the used car market I went.
There were some requirements that had to be met. My wife wanted it to be Laser blue because it's cute. She wanted white stripes and a white roof. It had to be automatic because I wasn't about to teach her to drive a stick and she would have hated driving the stick in traffic on her daily commute if she got a stick. She didn't want leather (vegetarian's can't eat meat or sit on leather apparently) but she didn't have a whole lot of requirements as far as options. I'm the techno-nerd type and I really wanted all the cool options. My requirements were a bit different. The Mini has a cool dual sunroof. None of the new ones that we looked at when we were at the dealership had the sunroof. To me, the sunroof was a must have. I wanted automatic climate control. It had to have the iPod connector and bluetooth and I really wanted it to have the comfort access system and some upgraded wheels. If we were going to get a new car, this wouldn't be much of a problem. We could either try to find one that met all of our needs on the lot or we could special order one. But since we were looking at used cars, we were subject to what was on the market.
If I was going to buy a used car, I didn't want to buy someone else's problems. The car had to be fairly new and still under factory warranty. I kept searching and searching. It was really hard to find an automatic.Probably 80% of the Minis I saw were manuals. After weeks or looking on craigslist and Autotrader and Cars.com and Yahoo Autos and AOL autos and every other used car website imaginable, I found one that met just about everyone one of our needs. It was a 2008 Laser Blue, Automatic, Mini Cooper S with the Sport Package, Convenience Package, Permium Package, Cold Weather Package, Park Distance Control, Blue trimmed interior, Chrome Line Trim, and Chrome Mirror Caps. In those packages it had basically every option with the exception of navigation. The only problems it had was that it had a black roof and black stripes and the seats were cloth with patches of blue leather. It had 8000 miles on it so it was still under factory warranty for 42000 miles or 3 years and scheduled maintenance is included. The price was pretty good too. They were asking $24,000. I configured a new car with all the same options and it came close to $32,000. I contacted them about the car and managed to get them to drop the price by $500. There was nothing even close to that price with those options available in our area. I found a few Minis for $26,000 but they didn't have nearly as many options and they didn't meet a lot of our requirements. After talking it over with my wife, we decided to go for it. It was during Holy Week that I called the salesman and told him we were going to buy the car.
We did all the paperwork by mail and I bought a plane ticket on Southwest for $49 to Burbank. The salesman said he would pick me up from the airport when I arrived. I figured with the $49 plane ticket plus $10 in fees and a $25 tank of gas which already came with the car, it cost me $85 to get it from L.A. instead of locally. It only took me 4 1/2 hours to drive it back and that was with a stop at In N' Out to pee and eat. The car made it easily on one tank of gas. The drive home was probably the most fun I have ever had driving up highway 5. I connected my iPhone to iPod connector and was jamming to tunes the whole way. The thing handles amazingly well and even though it's a really small and light car, it feels really solid. I love the thick steering wheel and how it feels in my hands. The comfort access system is very cool. I never have to take the key out of my pocket. I just walk up to the car and press a button and the doors unlock. It has options that I wouldn't have even though of getting like the heated seats and back up sensors. The heated seats will come in handy on a cold day but I have to admit that back up sensors are pretty useless on a car that small.
When I think about the other Mini that I almost bought, I am so glad that I passed it up. I ended up getting a much better car at a much better price. It has every option I could have wanted and some that I never thought I would want. I like the car so much that I told me wife that if she doesn't like it, we'll get her a Prius and I'll take the Mini. She ended up liking it too and a Prius isn't even a thought now. I'm tempted to get another one for myself. Whenever we go out, it's a given that we are taking the Mini instead of my Honda.
Anyone who knows me knows that I take a long time to make a decision. I would rather miss out on an opportunity then rush into something and end up regretting it. The bigger the decision, the more time I will take. (You don't want to know how long it took my wife and I to find our house.) Considering that a car is the second largest purchase that I will make, I wanted to be very sure about it before I made a decision. I do so much research that I usually end up knowing more about the cars than the person trying to sell it to me.
My wife is a vegetarian librarian from UC Berkeley. No joke. So getting a big V8 powered SUV isn't an option not that I was thinking about getting one anyway. Initially, we were looking to get a hybrid and were deciding between the Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius. We started looking for a car last summer when gas prices were $4.50/gallon. At that time, the Prius was selling like crazy with a huge markup. The Civic was already a lot cheaper and you could negotiate the price so we concentrated more on the Civic. I managed to get a quote from a salesman at Gilroy Honda for about $50 below invoice. It seemed like a great deal considering a used Civic Hybrid with 10,000 miles on it was selling for just about the same amount. I think the guy who quoted me that amount realized that he could sell the car for a lot more to someone else and instead of keeping his word, he decided to completely ignore me. I would call him and he would give a bunch of BS and say he would call me back and then never call. Eventually I gave up on him. The guy was a jerk.
I've always liked the Mini Cooper. It's a small, fun car and at the same time, it gets pretty good gas mileage. If you read my blog regularly you might remember the used car salesman that tried to sell us a Mini Cooper. That Mini was pretty nice. If it weren't for the jerk off salesman, I just might have bought it. It was a good thing that I didn't though. They were asking $24,800 and they gave me a bunch of crap and didn't really budge on the price much at all. It was a 2006 Mini Cooper S with 24,000 miles on it. It was the older body style with the older supercharged engine. After that, we were kinda soured on the idea of buying a car and put it off for a few months.
When we started thinking about it again, we looked at the Fit and the new Honda Insight Hybrid. The Fit was not bad but didn't have nearly the power that I would have liked. We didn't even try the Insight since the salesman told us that it was going to be even more underpowered than the Fit. Besides that, the Insight was just plain ugly.
We went over to the Mini dealer to see if a new Mini would be a good option. The big problem with a new Mini is the cost of the options. The base car might be pretty well priced but once you add the options, the car's price jumps through the roof. The ones that we looked at were all over $26,000 and none of them had all the options that we wanted (Actually, I was the one that wanted all the options). To add to that, the dealership was still marking the cars up by $2000. The salesman that showed us the cars wasn't pushy at all. He did scare the crap out of us when we went over to their secondary lot to look at the available cars. The guy drove like a mad man. The one good thing about our visit is that we both decided that we liked the Mini even though the size might be a problem later down the road but we left the dealership feeling somewhat confused.
I could tell my wife was getting kind of excited about the idea of getting a Mini. I knew that she liked it which made me want to get it for her even more. When I would talk to her, she would tell me that she was leaning toward the new Prius mainly because it was the more practial choice. The Mini was the more emotional choice. It was pretty clear when I could tell that she was getting excited when I mentioned buying a Mini. I started doing a lot more research on the Mini. I configured a new on on the Mini web site trying to see what combination of options would make it reasonably priced without making me feel like I got the stripped down version. It didn't really work. I convinced myself that navigation wasn't worth the cost. I would rarely use it and in a year or two, the software would be out of date and the user interface would start looking old. Even without the fancy $2000 Navigation system, the car was still right around the $30,000 mark. I couldn't pay that much money for a big go kart. Off to the used car market I went.
There were some requirements that had to be met. My wife wanted it to be Laser blue because it's cute. She wanted white stripes and a white roof. It had to be automatic because I wasn't about to teach her to drive a stick and she would have hated driving the stick in traffic on her daily commute if she got a stick. She didn't want leather (vegetarian's can't eat meat or sit on leather apparently) but she didn't have a whole lot of requirements as far as options. I'm the techno-nerd type and I really wanted all the cool options. My requirements were a bit different. The Mini has a cool dual sunroof. None of the new ones that we looked at when we were at the dealership had the sunroof. To me, the sunroof was a must have. I wanted automatic climate control. It had to have the iPod connector and bluetooth and I really wanted it to have the comfort access system and some upgraded wheels. If we were going to get a new car, this wouldn't be much of a problem. We could either try to find one that met all of our needs on the lot or we could special order one. But since we were looking at used cars, we were subject to what was on the market.
If I was going to buy a used car, I didn't want to buy someone else's problems. The car had to be fairly new and still under factory warranty. I kept searching and searching. It was really hard to find an automatic.Probably 80% of the Minis I saw were manuals. After weeks or looking on craigslist and Autotrader and Cars.com and Yahoo Autos and AOL autos and every other used car website imaginable, I found one that met just about everyone one of our needs. It was a 2008 Laser Blue, Automatic, Mini Cooper S with the Sport Package, Convenience Package, Permium Package, Cold Weather Package, Park Distance Control, Blue trimmed interior, Chrome Line Trim, and Chrome Mirror Caps. In those packages it had basically every option with the exception of navigation. The only problems it had was that it had a black roof and black stripes and the seats were cloth with patches of blue leather. It had 8000 miles on it so it was still under factory warranty for 42000 miles or 3 years and scheduled maintenance is included. The price was pretty good too. They were asking $24,000. I configured a new car with all the same options and it came close to $32,000. I contacted them about the car and managed to get them to drop the price by $500. There was nothing even close to that price with those options available in our area. I found a few Minis for $26,000 but they didn't have nearly as many options and they didn't meet a lot of our requirements. After talking it over with my wife, we decided to go for it. It was during Holy Week that I called the salesman and told him we were going to buy the car.
We did all the paperwork by mail and I bought a plane ticket on Southwest for $49 to Burbank. The salesman said he would pick me up from the airport when I arrived. I figured with the $49 plane ticket plus $10 in fees and a $25 tank of gas which already came with the car, it cost me $85 to get it from L.A. instead of locally. It only took me 4 1/2 hours to drive it back and that was with a stop at In N' Out to pee and eat. The car made it easily on one tank of gas. The drive home was probably the most fun I have ever had driving up highway 5. I connected my iPhone to iPod connector and was jamming to tunes the whole way. The thing handles amazingly well and even though it's a really small and light car, it feels really solid. I love the thick steering wheel and how it feels in my hands. The comfort access system is very cool. I never have to take the key out of my pocket. I just walk up to the car and press a button and the doors unlock. It has options that I wouldn't have even though of getting like the heated seats and back up sensors. The heated seats will come in handy on a cold day but I have to admit that back up sensors are pretty useless on a car that small.
When I think about the other Mini that I almost bought, I am so glad that I passed it up. I ended up getting a much better car at a much better price. It has every option I could have wanted and some that I never thought I would want. I like the car so much that I told me wife that if she doesn't like it, we'll get her a Prius and I'll take the Mini. She ended up liking it too and a Prius isn't even a thought now. I'm tempted to get another one for myself. Whenever we go out, it's a given that we are taking the Mini instead of my Honda.
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