Not quite the budget for a Mazda6 yet. Apparently need some car-credit history to get a good deal on car-credit. You know, the usual. Ended up with a brand-new “2005 Kia Spectra SX”:http://www.kia.com/newspectra/index.php that’s silver (pics coming soon) and a step up from the other nicest car I’ve had, a 2000 Nissan Altima. This has good mileage, very nice body styling, and even though it’s a 4-cylinder 2.0L engine, it’s extremely peppy both at low speeds and on the highway. No mistaking it for a V6 (for sure!) but it will hold its own and outperforms my ’94 Chevy Blazer by leaps and bounds. Plus, I’ll be able to save up to $100/month if I refinance in six months to a year after making payments and building credit. If I make payments above the minimum, I won’t even be upside down for very long, and will hopefully have the Mazda6 in whatever new iteration it’s in at the time (or something better!) reasonably soon!
My Dad and I got home not long ago from the dealer…he was in Ft. Wayne (about an hour and a half to two hours away from home) because we didn’t leave there until half-past midnight! We got there around 5 pm, my Dad knows the guy that runs the dealership for Bob Rohrman, we went to dinner with him (I ate sushi for the first time! Not bad if you eat the kinds without raw fish!) and test-drove the car. I jammed my middle finger in the door when closing it after the test drive; I suppose the policy is “it breaks you (your finger), you buy it” :-)
It actually took me a long time to decide to go with it, but I got a great price and decent financing, and insurance isn’t that bad after working some details out. Dang you have to sign a lot of papers to buy a car! I think the paper-signing took 1.5 hours! Got a nice full tank of gas and even got 10 gallons of gas for my truck for free just for buying the car. Cool. Stupid stuff is $2.099 per gallon at the moment…the 12.5 gallons my new 13-gallon tank needed was $26.41, more than the $25.88 I spent the other day at $1.699/gallon to top off my Blazer, which only needed 14.882 gallons in it’s 20-gallon tank admittedly. But with the MPG(Miles Per Gallon) on the Spectra, with 24/34 city/highway miles per gallon (EPA average rating), it barely sips gas compared to the Blazer. Adding up to a Mazda6 faster! :-)
Need to hit the sack now, no work tomorrow morning but some new toys (car, networking equipment) to play with!
Congrats on the car! I am excited to see it! I still think it’s funny that you bought it in the middle of the night, but whatever works.
You know what’s funny? I think you bought the Kia version of my car. My Cavalier also gets 24/34 gas mileage and has a 4 cylinder engine (although mine is 2.2 liters). I just found something in my glove box with the price of the car when it was new, and I saved over $5,000 by buying the car a year old, and that was a third of the original price. That’s just amazing depreciation…
Comment by Ruth — Fri, 2005-03-04 (Mar 04) @ 08:45
Heh…that’s pretty funny! I know the Spectra lost about $4,000 in value when I drove it off the lot. I figure the warranty is probably worth the extra cost of the new vs. used, which is one of the reasons I went with this one. Saved about 4% on the interest rate vs. used as well because of the agreement Kia has with the finance company.
I took some pictures of it in the middle of the night, too, while I was waiting for my Dad and the dealer to get back from across the lot. With the flash of course :-) Coming one of these days…I juts got up a few minutes ago and have some things to do…
Comment by David — Fri, 2005-03-04 (Mar 04) @ 15:09