adventures in car buying
Buying a car is becoming a Saga.
The Mitsubishi Colt we intended to buy turned out to have a 1.6 litre engine, which in this very strange country is considered high performance, and is taxed and insured accordingly. We did not wish to pay a third again as much in insurance as we were paying for the vehicle, so after discovering this exciting fact we went back to the dealership to look at a Very Tiny Daewoo (with a .8 litre hamster engine).
The VTD was just in and not yet prepared to be driven. Instead they offered us a Daewoo sedan of some sort to drive. We drove it. I wasn't especially keen on it. We said we'd come back to drive the VTD when it was ready, and we did. The VTD proved to be *too* small (I feel like Goldilocks) in that Ted's and my shoulders touched when we both sat in it, and in order for him to shift (because most vehicles in Ireland are manuals), I had to physically hold my right arm out of the way. As it happened, my shoulder has been acting up, so it was actively uncomfortable bordering on painful to do that, which indicated to me that this was not a good choice of vehicles.
So then we drove a somewhat larger but still quite small Fiat Punto, which was a lot more comfortable than either of the Daewoos and noticeably smaller than the sedan. (Size is an issue in Ireland. The roads are all about ten feet wide and full of hairpin turns, and as the roadsign (in countryside England) said, "Beware of oncoming traffic in your lane," so I really prefer smaller vehicles.) Then we went away again to call to find out about insurance for the Fiat, which is still expensive, but not prohibitively so. All of that arranged, we went back to the dealer today to buy the car.
There are roadworks going on in Carrigtwohill*, and have been for the last ten days or whatever that we've been going out there to look at cars. Today the roadworks had moved to directly in front of the dealership, where the road was completely torn up and the way in and out utterly blocked. There is literally no way to get a vehicle in or out of the lot. There will not be for at least another day, possibly two or three more days.
We did not, as you might surmise, come away with a car today.
Possibly Wednesday.
*pronounced "Carrigtool", or sometimes "Carrigtwool"
ytd wordcount: 44,300
miles to Dunharrow: 132
The Mitsubishi Colt we intended to buy turned out to have a 1.6 litre engine, which in this very strange country is considered high performance, and is taxed and insured accordingly. We did not wish to pay a third again as much in insurance as we were paying for the vehicle, so after discovering this exciting fact we went back to the dealership to look at a Very Tiny Daewoo (with a .8 litre hamster engine).
The VTD was just in and not yet prepared to be driven. Instead they offered us a Daewoo sedan of some sort to drive. We drove it. I wasn't especially keen on it. We said we'd come back to drive the VTD when it was ready, and we did. The VTD proved to be *too* small (I feel like Goldilocks) in that Ted's and my shoulders touched when we both sat in it, and in order for him to shift (because most vehicles in Ireland are manuals), I had to physically hold my right arm out of the way. As it happened, my shoulder has been acting up, so it was actively uncomfortable bordering on painful to do that, which indicated to me that this was not a good choice of vehicles.
So then we drove a somewhat larger but still quite small Fiat Punto, which was a lot more comfortable than either of the Daewoos and noticeably smaller than the sedan. (Size is an issue in Ireland. The roads are all about ten feet wide and full of hairpin turns, and as the roadsign (in countryside England) said, "Beware of oncoming traffic in your lane," so I really prefer smaller vehicles.) Then we went away again to call to find out about insurance for the Fiat, which is still expensive, but not prohibitively so. All of that arranged, we went back to the dealer today to buy the car.
There are roadworks going on in Carrigtwohill*, and have been for the last ten days or whatever that we've been going out there to look at cars. Today the roadworks had moved to directly in front of the dealership, where the road was completely torn up and the way in and out utterly blocked. There is literally no way to get a vehicle in or out of the lot. There will not be for at least another day, possibly two or three more days.
We did not, as you might surmise, come away with a car today.
Possibly Wednesday.
*pronounced "Carrigtool", or sometimes "Carrigtwool"
ytd wordcount: 44,300
miles to Dunharrow: 132