Car shopping

Rocket Boy's old car is on its last legs, so I got the idea that we should be proactive and buy a new one. We've been paying Ridgecrest mechanics to repair the car on and off all spring, because it failed its smog test, which meant we couldn't register it. Several fixes later, it managed to pass smog, but it's continued to misbehave. Rocket Boy blames this on the incompetence of Ridgecrest mechanics. But last week he took it to yet another Ridgecrest mechanic, who diagnosed an interesting problem -- the car needed a part that would cost $1700, unless we could find a used part, in which case it might be as little as $1400. The mechanic, who seems an honest sort, recommended against getting the part. He told Rocket Boy that when these sorts of parts start to fail -- and for the life of me I don't remember what the part was -- it means that a whole lot of other parts are about to fail too, and it's time to move on.

The car, a Mitsubishi Montero, is 19 years old and has about a million miles on it. Still, Rocket Boy doesn't want to let it go. But then I hit on the right thing to say. I said "You know, we don't have to get rid of the Montero. We can keep it as long as you like. We'll just get a THIRD car." (Actually, it will be a FOURTH car, because we still have one sitting on the driveway in Boulder. It's 25 years old. I just got the insurance bill for it. But I digress.)

Rocket Boy said OK, since you put it that way, maybe we can think about a new car. That was all the encouragement I needed. To distract myself from icky things like the fact that our rental house is now as of June 7th officially in foreclosure, I started researching cars. We wanted to find a not too big SUV with lots of room for people and cargo, good gas mileage, and low cost. I asked people's opinions, I read Consumer Reports, I read other reviews online, I looked at automakers' websites. And I came to the obvious conclusion that we needed to look at cars in the flesh, as it were.

So today around noon we all piled into my Subaru and drove 85 miles to Victorville, where there are car dealerships. Actually, Ridgecrest has a few car dealerships and it was probably very bad of us to ignore them and go to Victorville. Paving Victorville's streets, not Ridgecrest's, and all that. But we didn't actually BUY anything yet, so it's not so bad.

We went to three dealerships: Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Ford. We decided to look at new cars, even though we're probably going to buy used.

At the Mitsubishi dealership, a pleasant salesman in a suit minus the jacket (it was in the 90s) came over to us and showed us around. We looked at an Outlander and an Endeavor. I was hoping we'd like the Mitsubishis, since the car we're giving up on is a Mitsubishi. But the odd thing was that Rocket Boy didn't really fit in them. He's tall, with a long straight back, and his head almost touched the ceiling in these cars.

Next, we went down the street to the Toyota dealership. They were having a big used car sales event, and we couldn't find anyone to help us. That was a first for me at a car dealership! Finally someone told us to go inside and ask the receptionist for help. She called on her loudspeaker for someone from sales, and then went back to looking at pictures of high-heeled shoes on her computer. No one came. After a while she noticed us still sitting there (really, we're hard not to notice, with the twins screaming away) and called again. Finally a nice older man wearing a Hawaiian shirt came to help us. He showed us a Highlander, a 4Runner, and a RAV4. I had thought the Highlander would be the best choice, and Rocket Boy did like it. But the car we both REALLY liked was the RAV4. I thought it would be too little, but it's an oddly spacious car.

Then we drove to the Ford dealership, where a very forceful young man in a bright red shirt showed us an Escape. He told me that he'd recently sold three Escapes to people who were trading in Subaru Foresters. I said "We're NOT trading in the Forester," and he seemed disappointed. He said, "We love to get those cars." I kept looking back at my car to be sure they weren't surreptitiously towing it away. Anyway, Rocket Boy liked the Escape very much too. Again, it was a smaller car than I thought he'd like. This is why you have to look at cars in the flesh, not just online.

Boo bears had fun car-shopping -- they climbed in and around every car we looked at, demonstrating how easy or difficult it was to crawl from the back seat to the cargo area, playing with the mirrors, sitting in Daddy's lap when he was trying to decide whether or not he felt comfortable in the driver's seat. But they got very tired in the heat, as did we all. After the Ford dealership we went to a Starbucks across the street for drinks and snacks, and then got on the road back to Ridgecrest. We were home a little before seven.

So, a Toyota RAV4 or a Ford Escape? Or something else entirely? Stay tuned.