New Car Buying = Utter Bull-honkery

Now, I'm not going to complain about the fact that I had to get a new car.  The old one was dieing and I had to replace her because I didn't feel confident about any kind of trip taking activities.  For the most part, I trusted her enough to get me to work and back, and that was about it.  So, I went off to look at cars.

First, looking for a new car is a complete crap chute.  There is no way that you can convince me otherwise.  Either you go through a dealer and get gouged on price, or you go through a private seller and that's a whole host of issues just waiting to happen.  In the end, really, you pick your losing side and you go with it.  In my case, I had to deal with only a few dealerships in the area.  Namely because there are only a few dealerships in the area.  In fact, they are: Charles River Saab, Toyota/Scion of Watertown, Watertown Ford, Clay Nissan, CitySide Subaru, a Chevy dealer I didn't bother with because their entire inventory was trucks, a few sketchy used car dealers I didn't trust, and a dealer that dealt only with cars that rich people can afford.  Hmmm...

So, I went shopping around.  I tasked the salesmen that approached me with finding a car that fit three criteria (you must first answer me these questions three!).  First, the car had to have less than 75k miles.  Second, the car had to cost no more than $300 a month.  Thirdly (and this is when most of them got a glazed look in their eyes), it had to be a manual transmission.  Oh. My. God.  Not one of them seemed to think that it was even a remote possibility.  Most people, they told me, want automatics.  Despite the fact that a small revival in manual transmissions was happening, no one seemed to have any in stock.  If they did, they had to dig for them.  When I bought the Jetta, at least every fourth or fifth car on the lot was a manual.  Good Lord.  One of them even told me that a lot of new sales people don't know how to drive stick.  Seriously?

Anyway, that really narrowed down my available options.  Some places had hundreds of cars in stock, but the most I saw available for manual transmissions was nine!  Nine cars out of 150+ cars available.  Oof.

With those three criteria in place, the salesmen would look through their systems.  After disappearing for about 30 minutes (the worst one, anyway), they would come back to inform me that either they had just sold their manual transmission cars (Ford), or they were $15k (Subaru and Nissan), or they had one or two available (all but Ford).  After this entire process, I narrowed down my choices to a 2006 Hyundai Elantra or a 2006 Scion tC.

The Hyundai Elantra: 65k miles.  A 2.0L, inline-4 cylinder, 16 valve, 140 horsepower sedan.  Silver, with a clean but obviously "loved" interior.  $8,000

The Scion tC: 60k miles.  A 2.4L, I4, 16 valve, 160 horsepower hatchback coupe.  Dark gray with a beautiful interior. $12,353

After much soul searching and personal finance organization, and a call to my sister about it, I decided on the Scion.  It rides beautifully.  Two problems: One, my credit rating is horrible due to college loans, bad purchasing decisions, and the aforementioned Jetta.  Two, because of said bad credit, my final monthly payments are $340\month.  It's not going to break the bank, I'm glad to say, but it's a bit more than I was hoping to pay.

Still, all things considered, I'm glad to have a car that I don't have to worry about; one that won't leave me constantly wondering if the car will, in fact, be able to get me to my parents' place and back.

Oh, and here's what it looks like:

I'll post more about it later, after I've learned her name.