I've been looking for a car to buy for about a month now. Several times there has been a car which I thought I might buy, but then something happens when I go to look at the car, and I know that I'm not going to buy that car. Allow me to elaborate.
First I found an Alero that looked nice online. It had 150,000 miles on it, but the guy at the dealership who I corresponded with told me that the new motor had only 30,000 miles. When I went out to look at the car, I found that the "new" motor had not yet been installed in the car. The old motor was already taken out, so the car was ready to have the motor replaced, but the day I went there, it had no motor in it at all. The dealer was afraid that there might be more things wrong with the car as well, which would be discovered after the "new" motor was put in, when the car could be driven again.
While I was at that dealership, Dad left a voicemail for me about a car my grandparents' next door neighbor wanted to sell. I was going down there that weekend, so I looked at the car while I was there. It has great fuel efficiency because it's a diesel. It is also a stick shift. I have driven a car with manual transmission before, but I couldn't seem to get the hang of it in that car. For some reason, I couldn't drive it at all.
This week, Trey found a really nice looking Accord Coupe listed on AutoTrader.com, in Dallas. I sent an email inquiry to the owner, asking where the car was and if I could come look at it. He emailed me back, stating that he had bought the car here and took it with him when he moved to SCOTLAND. He said that because it's an American car, built for American specs or whatever, it was expensive for him to keep in it Scotland. He wants to sell it cheap to someone in America, and has arranged the shipping and insurance for shipping and everything. It's very nice - fully loaded. But buying a car that I've never seen before? I don't know about that.
Yesterday, I went out to a dealership down the street to look at a car they had listed on AutoTrader.com. A 2004 with 85K miles on it for under $5K. It looked pretty good. Unfortunately, when I got there the salesman told me that it had just been pulled for servicing because the check engine light had come on the day before or something. What's up with that?
Three weeks ago this coming Tuesday (the 15th) I called a Wycliffe man who goes to auctions to find cars for Wycliffe people. Everyone I've talked to says he found them their car in a week or less (one only took 2 days). It's been almost 3 weeks and he hasn't found anything for me! He has a few cars right now, but they don't seem so great to me. The ones in my price range have been in accidents and written off as total losses by the insurance company; then they were rebuilt. So they have "rebuilt" or "salvage" titles, which he tells me is usually not something a bank will want to give me a loan for. They are older and have more miles on them than the cars I have been finding myself that do not have salvage titles, for the same price.
There are a few other cars I've found online for sale by owner, not at a dealership, but all my inquiries about those car go unanswered. So either they've already sold the cars or they don't want to sell them anymore.
I'm reading 2 Kings right now. This morning, my reading was all about Elisha and miracles God performed through him to provide for different people. It seems kind of ridiculous how much trouble I've had with the cars that I've really thought I might buy. I think God must have something in mind. All I want is something cheap that's in good condition and gets good gas mileage. It's no good to buy a cheap car that will cost me a fortune in maintenance or gas. Except in the case of the miraculous, which I don't rule out as impossible, I will have to have a loan to pay for the car. But it would be nice to keep my payments low and not have to take an eternity to pay the loan off. I already have my student loans which I will be paying on for an eternity.
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