Monday, April 18, 2005

Car-licious

We've done our worst piece of bargaining yet - or perhaps our best. Having missed out on 2 houses and a cafe in the last 3 months we were pretty keen not to miss out on the car of our dreams. Of course this means we have gone well over budget and could have bought a Reuben Paterson painting after all. Never mind. Our new car is lovely and has one of those beep beep things that opens the doors.

A car salesman type person asked me what I wanted in a car, and looked a bit superior when I said I wanted one that wasn't dark coloured and had a beep beep door opener. Honestly who gives a shit about ABS and EFI and bloody fat exhausts. I want a car that doesn't look filthy all the time and I don't have to walk around three times with a toddler and 7 month old to lock and unlock the doors.

That said our wee number has 17" rims and low profile tyres. I don't really know what that means, but everyone that does has looked kind of impressed. When we told the chap we're buying it off that we'd like to put normal tyres on he looked fairly flabbergasted. Can you look fairly flabbergasted? So we think perhaps we'll keep them and go for drags up and down the Esplanade.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Sounds like us - our (or should I say, Becky's) shopping list was:

1) Power Steering, for parking on Wellington's narrow streets;
2) Bigger, so the kids find it harder to fight whilst strapped into the back seat;
3) central locking, for one click unlocking using only your teeth when you are holding onto both kids and a pile of shopping;
4) Decent stereo capable of playing the Wiggles at volumes sufficient to drown out the sound of children screaming;
5) Air conditioning, so that long trips on sunny days stopped being a trial of one's heat tolerance and sanity.

Now we have the archetypal family car, a Toyota Camry. It's so quietly conservative that everytime I drive it, I feel like I'm 55 (which is no surprise, as we bought it off my Dad). At least it's a 3 litre, so has some vroom when it's required.

Martha Craig said...

oh we were only a tiny bit sensible. Having sold the reliable Honda we went for a smaller engine and boot space and more expensive repairs. If you live in the Hutt you have to grasp at any cool you can get your hands on. When I told a friend we wanted a Saab he said he thought of them as being cars for young people in Mt Vic - which is precisely what we'd like to be.

llew said...

Saabs are top of the list in the Dog & Lemon Guide to Used Vehicles (worth a look at).

Although he also waxes lyrical about Toyota Corollas. For different reasons.

Re: the tyres - that's just technical jargon for "twice as expensive as other tyres". But Tony's Tyre Services will do you a good deal.

What sold our car to my wife, was the heated front seats. No contest after that was mentioned & demonstrated.

Mr Reasonable said...

Mrs R was content with cup holders...lots of 'em. They appear to be full of hair clips, chocolate wrappers and miscellaneous bits of toys from the $2 shop right now. I am thinking of having a small sale of their contents....what am I bid for a small blue plastic thing that could be a wing/door/foot/important piece of the cars inner workings?

Martha Craig said...

Sounds like us women are a very wise lot. How often does one get to use the all the anti-skid fandangally doowops compared with needing a nice warm arse, good parkability and knick knack receptacles?

Martha Craig said...

oh beautifullllllll. We got the car today and it is so much better than I could have imagined. Heated seats! Genius.