Our NEW Car!

So for those of you who don't know, Nancy and I have been with out a car for a long long long time now. Living in Salt Lake and both going to school full time in Provo/Orem without a car takes the term "paying your dues" to a whole new level. Seriously.

Now that Nancy has graduated, we thought it would be a good idea for her to get a job. That said, we also figured it would be a good idea to get a car so that she can get to and from work. So we looked at our checking account and figured out that we have around $3,000 to spend on a car and anything over $3,000 we would have to take out a loan for the remaining amount. First, after enormous feedback on which car to drive, we decided we would look at this sweet puppy:

A 2001 Honda Accord EX V6, fully loaded with black leather interior. It was way nice when we went to test drive it. It blue booked at $7,200, but the lady was asking $6,500 with the price not being "firm" ... reason being was because the transmission was acting up a little bit. I figured I could just buy a warranty on it and if it went out I would just use my warranty. Well, I did a little research and found out that the 98-2002 accord/civic is notorious for bad transmissions, even if you replace or rebuild them, these models will continue to have problems. This is just not something (potential car problems) we even wanted to mess with and we gracefully had to pass on this beaute.

Our next car was:

...a 2001 VW Jetta GLS V6 listed at $5,500. This was a nice car on the outside, but on the inside it seemed a little worn (though it did have power everything, loaded, leather seats, etc.). Not necessarily because it was poorly taken care of, but because VW's just start to look worn after a while on the interior. We took it on a test drive, and it seemed fine. We pulled into a parking lot and popped the hood. The coolant reservoir was unusually active. I followed the radiator hose to the engine block and could smell coolant as well as a pressurized sound coming from the block. They said there was nothing wrong with it. I should note that when I say "they" I mean that it was former Utah Ute center and 700 KALL radio personality Kyle Gunther. Not sure I want to call him and his wife out for intentionally omitting engine problems, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that there was something wrong with the vehicle. We took a quick pass on that one.

We decided that we would just try to find the best car for under $3,000 that we could find.

That brings us to our last, and final candidate:

Meet "The Pimped Perry."

This was the best car that we could find for our money. It was relatively cheap to fix, just had its radiator, water pump, timing belt, breaks and tires replaced. All stories checked out, Carfax was clean, test drive went great AND it got 30 mpg average. It was also really fun to drive, it felt good. Pretty nice.

We are going to go put a deposit on it tomorrow and then we just need to wait for the title to be mailed from the owners parents in california and we are just going to pay cash for it - no loans, no debt, that's just how we roll.

Honestly, I can't stop looking at her pictures. "The Pimped Perry" is all that we want in a car right now - reliable, recently serviced and cheap to fix.

We are just so incredibly excited. I might, for the first time in almost 2 years, DRIVE to school tomorrow.