I finally have a few minutes to blog. Thanks to Bob who is on Baby Duty.
We bought a new car. Well, a "new" old car. No new car smell for us.
The reason this came to be is because yours truly, ie me!, trashed the old one. Yup, Meg wrote it off! No dramatic accident, just a major faux pas with a 4 litre tin of paint that spilled all over the leather interior of the car causing $16,000 damage. (Gulp). We put in an insurance claim for that little accident, then a few weeks later some lovely thugs came along and scratched, egged, busted up the exterior of the car. They broke the windscreen, smashed in the back window, scratched stuff on the bonnet, keyed the side panels - there was not a penal they did not touch. The car needed extensive panel beating and a complete re-spray. The two incidents combined cost more than the car was worth, so our insurance company wrote it off and paid us out ... took the car, and sold it for parts.
Bye bye car car
When the tow truck guy came and took our car away, I cried. What a fool! I even cried in front of the tow truck guy and had to apologise for being a dick head, but he said he understood, I was not the only overly-emotional waah-waah to shed tears when their car car went bye-byes. He also asked what was wrong with the car, you see it looks fine, as in the pic above, but it is all cosmetic. Some person at the glorious auction yard in the sky who can do their own work on fixing our baby will get a great buy. 2005 Beamer 120i with brand new tyres ($1200), brand new battery ($469) and only 60,000 on the clock.
Out with the old and in with the new
No more European luxury sports model cars for us! The only reason we had a
better than nice car is due to inheriting said car in "
the divorce of 2006". Sure, screwed over in the divorce in other ways, but Bob got the car and I got to drive it for 5 years. Noice!!! Thanks silly ex-wife!
Before I was introduced to such hedonistic luxury I drove a 1998 Suzuki Cino that was damaged on every panel (due to my poor driving), conked out at every light, and - surprisingly - also had paint spilled from the front passenger seat throughout. I gave said Cino to my mate Kate's son, who trashed it as far as a newly-licensed 17-year-old and his friends could possibly trash a free car. Wacky Jacky and his entourage did me proud and pounded that poor baby into the ground. We all cried when the Cino went to the great car yard in the sky. Ah, the Cino, we still talk fondly about the days of the Cino.
How to buy a new car
I would never buy 1. a new car, 2. an expensive car, 3. get the luxury package. That was Bob's old life, and he isn't much keen on flash cars, he much prefers a tough Aussie UTE! But we got to enjoy a lovely car, albeit completely impractical for a home-renovator/gardener/slob who doesn't take care of cars as they are things that get one from Point A to Point B, much less for a family with an ever-growing 13 year old, a car seat for toddler and another car seat for new-born on the way. That boot held so few plants!
Which brings me to the title of this post ....
Hotty Road Beast
It took many late-night hours of online searching, reading car reviews, hours upon hours on the internet delving into blokey places I did not care to go, to decide what to buy. Our new car had to last us 10 years. It had to cope with a fat labrador in the boot, two car seats, ever-growing teenager, and possibly a grandparent or two. It had to be safe, have the maximum amount of airbags, in both front and back, have enough power to get Ms Slow Driver of the Universe out of a tight spot on a highway if ever needed, and feel like a big safe thing! European cars out ($200 for windscreen wiper blades, hellooo ... noooo!) we chose a 2010 Holden Captiva. I present to you Hotty Road Beast!
And we love her! And we can afford her (thanks to ex-wife's indulgence and moi being smart enough to get an agreed value on the car for $5 a month extra). No leather seats, no performance engine, no "I'm a wanka and drive a BMW" badge on the front, but so much more!
And her name? Well technically driving an SUV that will never even so much as sniff a dusty path, much less a rocky off-road in any desert or wilderness anywhere in Australia while in our care, makes me a "soccer mom".
Soccer mom!!! Yep, a seven-seater city SUV crossover makes one a soccer mom. How excitingly pedestrian! But I have it on good authority (thanks Sarz) that one can only truly be called a soccer mom if one plasters stickers of frangipanis around the back windscreen. Huh! No frangipanis for us! And a second-hand broom broom in racing red with a V6 engine qualifies me as Ms Hotty Roadbeast! Yes me, not the car!!!!
(To those in the know, yes, we are aware the Holden Captiva is a rebadged Daewoo!)
