Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Fri, 2005-03-04 (Mar 04)

Got a New Car!

Filed under: Blog,Cars,General,Spectra — David @ 03:48

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!

Fri, 2005-02-25 (Feb 25)

Mazda6 Test Drive

Filed under: Blog,Cars,General,Mazda 6 — David @ 00:58

Took the recommendation of a friend and checked out a used car broker in town. Awesome Christians and they also have the best mechanic I’ve ever met in my life! Ask me if you’re interested in the name of the dealer.

The guy (the owner of the dealership/brokerage) took me and my Dad to the car auction place in Plainfield where we basically got to drive around and look at all their cars, and we could look at and test drive anything we wanted to on their test track! (It’s a nice “track” for testing but it doesn’t quite compare to the racing kind.) Got to drive four different “Mazda6”:http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/Mazda-6/ sedans. All essentially the same car, just different color/number of cylinders/trims. Here’s what they were (two were silver and two were black, but I keep confusing myself as to which were what color so I may be wrong here, but I think I remember…):

1. Black base trim 4-cylinder auto-transmission. This was nice, not too much different in feel than the Altima I had back in 2000.
2. Silver fully loaded V6 manual transmission. This thing just plain rocks! I didn’t get to drive it because I don’t know how to drive a stick shift (yet?). But the dealer drove me in it, and he, um, knows how to drag race cars :-) Very cool.
3. Black fully loaded 4-cylinder auto-transmission. Nice, felt like the manual V6 except for, well, the manual transmission and the V6! A little better accelleration than my Mom’s 2001 Infiniti G20 that her father gave her when he stopped driving last year (he’s in his mid-eighties), I could see myself with this one.
4. Best for last: Black, fully loaded V6 auto-transmission. I love this car. I want this car. Only problem? Should I get this or the silver stick shift with the same trim? I’m having a tough time deciding; making it harder is that the auto-tranny includes a nice little auto-manual-shifter feature over to the right of the Drive position (see “this photo”:http://photos2.ebizautos.com/1366/581667_29.jpg). But I didn’t realize that when I test-drove it, to see how it worked.

I’ve only driven a stick for one half-hour of my entire life. And that was an ’86 Ford Ranger tiny pickup truck that we had for a little while as an extra vehicle. First gear was kind of sticky, and I managed to kill the engine three times in that half-hour (well, it may have been more me than the sticky first gear, but even my parents had trouble with it sometimes. I don’t think they ever killed the engine though :-) But I think it might be fun to try a stick…only problem is, if I buy a car with a loan, and I get tired of driving a stick soon, I’m stuck for a while. But I think driving can be “boring” sometimes because it’s so simple (not that I don’t enjoy it!), so maybe a stick would make it more interesting. Then again, makes it a bit harder to use the cell phone and eat while driving! Six of one… :-)

Anyway, short post, need to get to bed. Nice “photo gallery”:http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/Mazda-6/Photos.htm of the car here, including the Wagon and 5-Door (Hatchback) models I’m not looking at.

Oh yeah, “fully loaded” means, in addition to stuff I’m probably forgetting:

Leather heated seats, premium Bose audio, auto-climate control, power moonroof, 17″ wheels with Alloy rims, bucket seats, 4-wheel ABS, Traction control, remote alarm system, 8-way power driver’s seat, and the Sport Package with optional Spoiler (see the first link above near the bottom for more of a description along with a better format of this list). Not sure if the Sport Package was on all the fully loaded ones I drove, some had spoilers some didn’t, all fully loaded had the 8-way power driver’s seat at least and most of the rest.

I still have some research to do (and maybe a bit more test driving :-) and some financing things to work out, but I really like the Mazda6 V6, fully loaded with either the manual or automatic transmission (once I decide :-) and I hope everything works out for me to get one soon!

While I’m at it…think perhaps this laptop would go well with either of the Mazda (silver or black) colors? “Envy m:870”:http://www.voodoopc.com/sellPage.aspx?productID=1019. Why yes, yes it would. And, if I don’t buy a car, I could probably afford it soon…so that would be a NO :-)

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