car shopping

For a year and a half now I've been without car payments after five years of monthly regular installments; so, of course things are going to go wrong now. Three week-ends in a row I've had my PT Cruiser in the shop for overheating, being forced to drive my mother in law's car about town and to work, making me feel needy. Thank God I at least had that option. The weekly mystery was, why was my PT overheating. After 2500 dollars and two months we got the problem fixed but not without leaving me insecure. Having had a dependable vehicle for seven years it was hard to have perfect trust in something that was now unreliable.

Then I got into my car one afternoon and glanced at the gas gauge on my way to the store. Oops, down to empty. That couldn't be right, after all it was just slightly above that before I parked. Then I noticed the speedometer and every other gauge was on zero. Great, another trip to the mechanics and this time I was encouraged to go to the dealer. Some recall affected the circuit that ran the dashboard lights and gadgets and therefore this repair would be cost free! Yea. But while I was at the dealers......why not investigate a new purchase? After all I had time while my car was being doctored.

Meanwhile, I have been diligently reducing my bills, having paid off five credit cards, saving me fifty to a hundred dollars a piece monthly and my house mortgage no longer exited after twenty five years. (No, I 'm not going to tell you how old I am but I was very, very, young when I bought the house!). This meant a monthly cash reserve of five hundred dollars or so.

Oh, the cars I drooled over! It is so hard to concentrate on one vehicle when you have a complete car lot to browse through. The new car looks, colors smells, gadgets. They really had hooks that get under your skin and reel you in. I couldn't imagine driving out of the dealership in my seven year old car, with the floorboards needing vacuuming and the car seats stained from my doggies. And all the junk in the trunk. I had the salesman run some figures by me and was surprised at how affordable a 2008 car would be, especially since all the afore mentioned riches were now at my disposal.

There was no pressure on me to purchase a car right away, but there was a good sales pitch. The salesman knew how to schmoose. He was ready to let me drive a new Jeep Patriot, Jeep Compass or Pt Cruiser off the lot to run my errands in and show my husband while my car was being worked on. Thank heavens I'm not a impulse buyer. I have actually been considering a new car for some time, while in the back of my brain (on a dusty ledge) a thought tugged at my desire to own one car for at least 100,000 miles. My past history with autos ended every seven years, which is where I'm at now. As I sat in each prospective purchase I envisioned myself to be content with it for years. If I could just own "this one car" I'd be content with it for the rest of my life. I was informed of the life time warranty on the transmission and power gadgets under the hood. When I skeptically asked for whose life time I was told for as long as I owned the car, up to and not limited to twenty years. Now I was impressed. I might actually stand a chance of a life time ownership. But I had thought my last car would be my last car! My baby. I had planned on being buried in my PT Cruiser and now I'm considering dumping her because of what probably amounted to my negligence in powder puff mechanics or a national recall.

Then I realized what I had been struck with....The lust of the eyes. The new car look. The new car smell. The new car colors. The clean spotless interiors. The new car warranties. I would be spending thousand of dollars over the next five years on a car to awe people, myself at the top of the list, without giving this one final repair a chance. And in seven more years I'd be just as tired of the looks and make of any car I got today. In seven more years there would be newer and shinier cars with more glitter that I would be tempted to trade a 2008 model in for.

That would be like God saying, okay, you've disappointed me four times now I think I'll throw you in the trash heap and get a new nation. Oh, wait, didn't that happen once? God doesn't get lustful when he sees a new nation develop. He doesn't get tired of us when we malfunction, He doesn't loathe us for the dirt on us or the junk in our hearts. He repairs, washes and vacuums us, and is ready to pick us up again and again and again.......While we are being overhauled he's not out looking for replacements; He waits for us to get steady and go back to serving him.

Oh, the things we can learn while waiting in a service department while our cars get fixed.