Sunday, December 9, 2007

Joining the ranks

Today I have become a member of a very large and not terribly illustrious club: I am now the owner of a Holden Commodore. Yep, big, generic, unexciting family car. I guess it had to happen - we do need something with a bit more space and the mega-whopper-humungous boot fits the bill (and, more importantly, the stroller and nine bags of shopping). We've been looking around a bit since I had the car accident and wrote the Camry off.
Shaun being Shaun embraced the "research" with gusto, since it involved the happy combination of two of his favourite things: cars and fiddling about on the internet. Anyhow, he figured that, for the money, we should go for a Commodore as a) they're big, solid, reliable, easy to get parts for, blah, blah, blah... wake me up when we're finished talking cars ... and b) he found one model (you care? The VS) that is supposedly better on fuel than most. I personally was keen to stay right out of the car stuff, occasionally throwing in helpful suggestions like, "I saw a great midsized wagon today ... think it was a Mercedes or something" and "I don't care what we get as long as it's red".
Had money not been an issue (ha!), I would have loved an Astra wagon - essentially a small car with a big boot, what everyone wants ... and therefore out of our price range.
Anyhow, this morning I was railroaded into the car to go look at some Commodore Shaun saw at a caryard somewhere out west yesterday. We headed to the highway near our place and there's a very dodgy caryard (the 'office' is a demountable where the 'staff' [bloke in singlet top and thongs] sit and chainsmoke inside) there, where Shaun pointed out a VS Commodore, the same model that we were setting out to see. I said maybe we should just duck in and have a look at it. And so we swung around and walked into the caryard round the corner from our house.
The car we'd been setting out to see was three months newer but $5500. This one was in better nick and $3300. Shaun couldn't quite believe his luck. He took it for a spin while E and I went to the pub next door for a lemonade ... and then we drove our 'new' car home.
Whole process took less than an hour. That's how shopping (especially car shopping) should be!

1 comment:

Stacey said...

I wish all car shopping was this easy. Any new car purchase for us involves months of research, months of tire kicking, many issues of Wheels and a protracted negotiation with the dealer. I just tag along and keep my mouth shut. Oh, and choose the colour!!