In Which Tim Does Not Buy a Car

Thursday, Tim said that there was a car he wanted to look at up in Cassadaga, NY.

I get confused because he has said, over and over, that he does not want to buy another car right now. Gives very sound reasoning for not doing so. Yet every evening he is looking at cars on the internet. Lately, he has been fixated on an Acura. So I say things like 'but I thought you didn't want another car right now." He says, "you always want to keep an eye on what's available."

Things to know: 

1) I could not care less about what car I am driving as long as it gets me from point A to point B, so I am happy with the Suburu, and Tim has two trucks.

2) We never buy new cars. They are overpriced and begin to depreciate as soon as you drive them off the lot. So we were looking for a good used car.

3) Tim does the maintenance on our cars, so....

4) in the end, car decisions are his to make which people don't quite understand, but it is the way we do things. Always have. 

Seriously, we discussed upgrading to a newer car last spring, gave away the car we were replacing, and then Tim began the search. In April, I was visiting my son's family. During our evening phone conversation, I mentioned to Tim that on the way to the Mennonite grocery store, I had noticed a number of neat farms with shiny black cars parked out front with for sale signs on them. I suggested he make the trip out with me next time to scope out potential purchases on the eastern side of the state

He laughed."Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you I bought a car." The fact had completely slipped his mind. 

But I digress, this time, I had only one request. I liked hatchbacks rather than a trunk. That was more practical in my mind. Night after night, he looked through listings. We went to probably a half dozen dealerships scoping out the offerings. For all of that, we definitely did not buy anything because we were not buying another car right now. 

Then he read about that Acura up in Cassadaga, so we made a trip up there to not buy it. And I was glad we didn't buy it. It was an okay car, but I thought it was overpriced compared to the Honda Pilot sitting next to it, with comparable options. Tim studied that car too and made the decision not to buy that one either. 

But then I saw his head pivot. He went quiet. He very likely heard angels singing. He headed for another car on the lot. He was all over it. All under it. Inside it. He was ticking mental boxes. I noticed it had a hatch instead of a trunk. My mental box: ticked. 

The salesman came out, slapped a license plate on it and handed Tim the fob. We took it for a test drive. We pulled off in a parking lot and he tested the options out. I read things from the car manual to him. 

He certainly was spending an unusually long time not buying this car. We drove back to the lot. Tim got out and studied the car. He gave me a list of things to look up on my phone while he studied under the hood again, and examined the frame.

I began to have some real doubts about whether we were still not buying this car. He said, "I am going to offer him (x dollars)" and headed off to the office. At this point, I knew for sure that we were definitely not not buying this car. We didn't, of course. And we did not not put a deposit on it, and we are not not picking it Monday afternoon.

It is a fleet car, well maintained, something called a Honda Crosstour, which was discontinued once Honda discovered that their Accord/SUV marriage was not a good seller. At that point, they made the switch back to selling Accords and offering a Honda Pilot to appeal to the SUV crowd. 

 

On the way home, Tim sighed. " I am glad that problem is done."

I said, "I had no idea that not getting a car was so stressful! I thought that once your mind was made up, you just went ahead and didn't do it."

Here is a random shot we got coming home from Tim's family reunion/outdoor brick oven breadmaking extravaganza yesterday. We drove home in comfortable carbed-out bliss.

I hope this makes up for the lack of train pictures, Andrew. I boarded with an allergy situation and got motion sickness. I did not spend a lot of time looking out the window, so no. I did not take pictures.