Back to that whole car situation thing...

BLOT: (13 Oct 2011 - 10:06:12 AM)

Back to that whole car situation thing...

In my last post, I alluded to a car situation. Which is a special way of hinting, in the shadowy cipher of the Aklo language, that we have a car situation. We = Sarah and myself. Well, Sarah. I don't drive because I am a loser, and so she has a car situation. Just, to the degree that she sometimes chauffeurs my loser ass around, we [again] have a...yeah. You know what I mean.

The situation is that we need a new car. Our current car, a 17-year-old mid-line Volvo was a decade used when we got it for her graduation gift. How used is unknown, since the odometer was broken [now fixed] but I would guess more than a couple miles were driven on it, through it, whichever. When, seven years ago, it was slightly rebuilt for us, some of the hoses and gaskets that were placed in it were apparently a bit brittle, and now most of them are wanting to fall apart all about the same time. We have dropped over $100 since last paycheck just to get it well enough to get it back and forth for now, since hopefully within a month or two it will no longer be a problem. It is like, I don't know, you having to throw all of your hard earned pirate gold out of your dinghy because if you don't, it will sink, but if you do, what good will it do you to make it to land anyhow? Broke, rumless, the only possession you own in the world is a worn out, dingy dinghy.

We took a quick look through a couple of car lots on Saturday: Bentley Hyundai [which is a few feet from our apartment] and Bill Penny Toyota. Fairly utterly non-impressed by the latter—not only were the 2011 Corollas on the lot a thoroughly artless car, but the overall experience was a bit, "Hurry up and sign this paper and then we'll get to the anal probing portion of the evening!". The former had a bit of hope. Kind of. Car salesmen are a tricksy lot [pun!] to love. At best they come across as cloying and all smiles, like a Yankee Candle. At worst, they come across as a drug pusher who is banking on your own desperation to trap you in their web. Too easy to picture all of them as the cool kids and bullies in rural high schools with big plans to run the world, reduced to sweaty collared shirts and bland, mono-colored ties.

The current number one car on our list is the Hyundai Elantra, preferably in Indigo Night with gray interior, and unless we see something at the Honda lot that makes us think otherwise, it will be the model we aim for (as for trim, I'm saying we should do the hot and sexy limited, while Sarah is favoring the GLS, which I assume might be a female/male divide on how sexy technology and especially gadgets and widgets can be).

Of course, could always find a way to get about $10k, and just rebuild the hell out of the Volvo. With a completely new set of hoses, new fuses, a better gas pump, new filters, new wiring, new gaskets, new sealant, and a general good cleaning and even paint job, the car would likely last us about as well and as long as it has to this point for half the cost of a new car. To my knowledge, though, banks do not like giving out car loans for used cars to be rebuilt. And that, I tell you, is an outrage: throw-away society indeed.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: October 2011