New Car Shopping - the lost post
Julie and I had a nice day together on Saturday. Grammy (Julie's mom) was in town for the holidays and was more than happy to be our babysitter. Our goal for the day was to go and look at new cars, in hopes of finding one we liked. My bug is a little impracticle now since it has such a small back seat and it's a pain to put a carseat in and out of. Julie did some research on the web, and had already looked at the Toyota Camry, as well as briefly looking at the Honda Accord. I've been out of the process for most of it b/c of my writing, and so it was a nice day to get together, do some shopping and make a mutual decision. We started out at the Audi dealership b/c I love the A4 (man their website is slow, and it doesn't work in Phoenix) and then tried the VW Passat, the Mazda 6 (did you know that Mazda is owned by Ford) and finally the Honda Accord. We actually stumbled upon the Mazda, as the sales guy at the Audi/VW place happened to also be a saleman at the Maza place next door. Here's what I thought of each:
- Audi A4 - this was my dream car. It drives real nice, it's fast and it looks awesome. Problem? It's small, and when I say small, I mean small. The interior room is smaller than my bug to give you an idea. That sucs b/c I really wanted this car. Pretty damn expensive though, so probably good that we didn't like it after we drove it.
- VW Passat - much roomier, but definitely a step down from the A4 feature-wise. The stereo (a Monsoon system), seemed awful, but that couldn't been b/c we just got done driving the A4 with a Bose system.
- Mazda 6 - very nice car, and definitely better than the first two. The problem - we never had Mazda on our list of cars-to-look-at, and we felt like we were "settling" if we got it. Definitely an awesome car, and if they'd had the color/V6 we wanted, we probably would've bought it.
- Honda Accord - this is a P-H-A-T car! It's definitely a family rig, but the inside is like a Cadi and it's still reasonably priced. It had everything the A4 had (save auto-up windows), plus a navigation system that Julie wants and I think is a waste of money - $2000! Of course, I wanted the 17" roms, and that's definitely a waste of money.
So I think we're going to get teh Accord if we can find the right color and
a V6. We'll see, they have some great rebates through the end of teh year (Tuesday),
so who knows. After shopping for calls all day, we went to the Raible Designs'
Holiday Party at Morton's
Steak House. Only a couple people showed up (the only two employees), but
it was definitely a great time, and a nice romantic evening.
It was also fun b/c I used to work for the valet (Kenny) in college, when I
was a valet in downtown Denver (Larimer Square). He's a very cool guy and I
haven't seen him in about 7 years - so it was nice to catch up. It should be
a good week if I get to start driving a new car, but it'll be sad to see the
ol' Turbo (a.k.a. Speedy Gonzales) go away. There goes my youth - onto being
a dad and a family man. With a kid as cute as Abbie, it's going to be a lot
of fun.
Above was the post I lost on Sunday, and since I had the screenshot, I felt
the need to post it anyway. We did find the Honda Accord we wanted today and
went into Planet
Honda to sign all the paperwork. It's schedule to arrive tomorrow, but could
be as late as Friday. We'll see - the hard part is over, now we just have to
pick it up. I also finished the writing part of my Struts chapter last night
- finally! I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'll
be posting the sample app for it in the next week or so.