L-M-N-O-P

Totally cheating on the post-a-day thing here, but life outside the electronic box has stepped in and said “hey, pay some attention to me” over the past couple of days, so there went that. And that’s absolutely okay.

L is for luxury, M is for money, N is for new, O is for “ottomobile,” and P is for perfect. That wraps up the last week of buying a new car on a more accelerated schedule that we had originally planned.

My old Saturn was starting to have problems more regularly, and I was getting sick of not having a reliable car. So, we started car shopping last Sunday, rather than waiting until summer, as we had originally planned.

I knew going in that I wanted a small SUV. I hadn’t shopped for a car for fourteen years or so, and, sadly, Saturn no longer exists, so I wanted to drive a bunch of things to see what’s out there. From looks alone, I liked the Toyota RAV4, the Subaru Forester, and the Hyundai Tucson, and I wanted to shop a lot of what was in that class.

Last Saturday was about Internet research, reading reviews and doing comparisons. I knocked the Hyundai out based on a few reviews, and also based on a bit of lingering leeriness of Korean cars. Sunday morning, I had it narrowed down to the Honda CRV (even though I think the new ones are kind of ugly), the RAV4, and the Forester, with a few backups for round 2, if it came to that.

I drove the CRV first, and I thought it was fine. It has a nice backup camera, and the interior is thoughtfully laid out. John didn’t like the ride at all, though, and it was still ugly.

The RAV4 was second, and I really liked it.

Subaru wasn’t open on Sunday, so I had to wait until Tuesday to test drive the Forester. And I ended up really liking it, too.

At that point I had two solid choices, either of which I would be perfectly happy with, and thus decided I didn’t need to drive anything else.

I went back to both Subaru and Toyota on Wednesday and drove both again to compare them back to back and get a few questions answered. Each had a few pros and cons. The Subaru had a smaller video screen, but it was positioned better under an overhang to minimize glare. The Toyota offered Sirius/XM standard, whereas to get it on the Subaru, you had to get the navigation package (which I wasn’t interested in). Although the measurements were about the same, the Subaru felt more spacious and like it had more visibility. The Toyota offered a blind spot monitor. The Toyota salesman was much less salesman-y and worked for a dealership with a better reputation.

In the end, the Subaru won by a hair, and we went back on Saturday to make a deal. Four hours later, including a few moments when we almost walked out, I had a new car. I wasn’t actually expecting to drive one home that day, not only because of the craziness of dealmaking, but also because these new Foresters are in demand and I didn’t think they’d have one with the things I wanted on the lot, but there it was. The only thing on my wish list I did without was the Homelink garage door opener. I solved that by ordering a much smaller replacement remote opener than the current one (which doesn’t fit well anywhere in the new car).

While the car shopping process sucks, and I don’t want to do it again anytime soon, I’m quite pleased with what I ended up with.