Adventures in Used Car Buying

Aug 11, 2010 08:51

The deal with Honda fell through earlier this week so now I'm reduced to crawling car lots looking for something that wont fall apart on me. *sigh* Am looking at a 2005 KIA Sedona minivan that has a ridiculously large number of miles on it (118,000--for a 5 year old vehicle!). Its otherwise in pretty sound shape, but it does need 105K & 120K maintenance done and some of that stuff is pretty pricey! I'm armed with the KBB (Kelley Bluebook) & NADA (National Auto Something Association) valuation for this model with this many miles on it. Have already given this dealership a large retainer (very large) and will see what they have to say when I go in later this morning. IF they wont play nice (reasonable, I don't expect to get the vehicle for the absolute lowball its worth, but am willing to meet them in the middle which is about $6k--this would still leave me needing to finance a portion of the title & should make them happy as they'll get More money that way, but I'll get more reasonable payment options & a start back at rebuilding my credit), I'll buy the KIA. IF not, I'll be doing more car lot crawling cuz I drove everything on this particular lot yesterday and nothing else was remotely acceptable (and this is pushing the acceptable label at that).

Also trying to plan a trip to visit my grandmother so we can help her celebrate her 90th Birthday! Can't do this w/out a vehicle, so I hope something comes through here shortly.
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