Car Day

Saturday morning, the transaction for the pickup was completed. A nice gentleman paid me my revised asking price for the Silverado. He was even nice enough to bring back the garage door opener I forgot on the visor. I immediately took the cash to the bank, rounded up Lauren, and headed on over to First Texas Honda where we were pretty much the easiest sale they’d ever seen. Lauren had long ago made up her mind that the Honda CR-V was the car for her, thanks to strong recommendations from people such as Anne Poulter, so we basically walked in and told the salesman what we wanted to buy. I’ve never owned a foreign-made car, but virtually every smaller SUV rating on the market said the CR-V was the best for safety, fuel economy, price, etc.

We balked at the service contract, which didn’t set well with the Honda folks. We were pretty much told we were insane for passing on the service packages because of the computerized components’ propensity for breaking down under the hot Texas sun, which very well may be true. But adding in the Gold package bumped up our monthly payment an extra $50, meaning an extra $600 per year, or $3000 over the financing period. They said an average computer-related repair would cost us $940. So the car would need to have 3.2 such break-downs in the next five years for us to so much as break even. With virtually every penny we will earn going towards a big monthly car payment plus mortgage payments plus daycare payments, I would rather risk it than give them the money up-front for repairs we may never need.

Nevertheless, it was a very smooth transaction. We were in and out and had our new CR-V within three hours. I would highly recommend doing business with First Texas Honda and our salesman Brandon Nava. It is haggle-free pricing so we didn’t have to worry about trying to negotiate a better price, which was a relief for me. And we got a 0.9% financing rate, which was better than the 2.3% rate for the credit union loan we were pre-approved for.

I’ll be driving the Impala now, and maybe I’ll take the CR-V in to work a few times when Lauren is on maternity leave. The CR-V has some cargo space, but if I need to do any more hauling of things like lumber I guess I’ll have to rent a truck by the hour.