My old car was dying slowly. The radio only half worked. Speedometer was dead. Odometer was dead. Rusty, slowly falling apart. 189,000 miles on it, many of those from the upper Midwest, which means body damage. And it's a Suzuki Sidekick, with a top speed of under 70 mph, which has been driven across the country two and a half times by me.
So, the Mrs and I set about coming up with criteria for a new car some time ago. Mine were pretty simple. Manual transmission, good gas mileage, and A/C. The Suzuki doesn't have A/C, and by the way that as really sucked for the past 5 years with Los Angeles and now Virginia heat. In short, I needed a runner, not some tricked out ride
So we researched, and we waited, and we saw an advert online for a Ford Fiesta marked down to around ten grand. It meet my criteria, so off we went to go check it out. While we were there, we test drove a Focus, which also met my criteria but was a step up, which means also more expensive.
After the test drive, we found out that the Focus was on sale cheaper than the Fiesta was. Sold. After all the taxes, fees, licensing, yada yada yada plus floor mats (we live in the country) and wind deflectors (this is a rainy day car) we still came out several thousand dollars below what the original sticker price was listed.
So now I have a new car.
Anybody want a Suzuki Sidekick as a project car?
1 comment:
I've had enough project cars, thank you.
When I was growing up, all the cars I worked on were either Fords or Chevy's built from the 50's through the early 80's. (Lots of farm vehicles.)
These days I can't stand working on cars, because everything has changed. You have to take the tire off in order to change the belts. You have to just about lift the engine out to change the spark plugs. WTF! And these days you have to pay an oil disposal fee at the local dump, which makes it cheaper for me to take it to the shop to have the oil changed.
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