It was a Craigslist deal. I generally like Craigslist deals, but not when they involve lots of money. It makes me nervous. A person can only do so much inspection of what they're buying. The rest is left up to trust of the person selling it and your level of acceptance. I haven't had it long enough for anything wrong to surface, nor have I had it long enough to find that something was hidden or covered up by the seller. I hope there is nothing of course, but it always takes time to get to a level of relaxation with a used car. At least it does for me.
It's a 2003 Honda Civic LX. It's fully equipped, LX-wise, and completely beautiful condition. 132,000 miles on the body, and 80,000 on the engine. I bought the car from a young guy (I'm guessing 23-25 years old) that works at the Honda dealership. He put a warranted used engine in it after giving it a new timing belt, water pump, and other assorted replacement parts ("all genuine Honda parts" he assured me). He said it was his girlfriend's car and she ran the original engine out of oil. He was not a very good liar though--I think he just got a sweet deal on a trade-in because it had a bad engine. The car is virtually like new everywhere. The only signs of wear at all are a few spots on the removable floor mats. Under the car, the trunk, the interior--all in fantastic shape.
I hate buying cars.
The deal came close to not going down. The car was in Bellingham, and that's a two-hour drive north of here. After many texts and a few emails, we arranged to meet at the Lowe's store near his place because it appeared that by the time we got there it would be nearly dark. I don't like buying a car from a private party when I can't see their home, but I pushed that aside this time. I had been looking for a new car for quite a while and wanted this one to be 'the one'. I told the guy we should be there about 9pm at the latest. When we went through Everett at about 7:30 (still about an hour from him) I texted him and told him so. He replied with something like, "Oh, I didn't think you would be here until 9." Hmm. He knows damn well what transpired because it was all on his phone in the form of text messages. I reminded him of all that. When we were near his area I again texted him. He replied with something like, "Ok, um, I just wanted you to be aware that I've got another guy interested in the car and he may be there when you arrive." What the hell? It was like his story kept changing. Both me and Suz fussed and fumed over that as we neared the meeting place. When we got there he was nowhere to be seen. I texted him. "Oh, I'll be there in five minutes." Again, he story changed. We waited there over 20 minutes for him to show up. We texted him multiple times, one of which was to the point, "Is this deal going to happen?" No reply. Sue had already told me a couple times up to that point, "We've driven a long way--give him some more time." After another 10 minutes I said, "Screw it, let's go." We had been waiting 30 minutes at that point. We we were just about to the freeway we got a text from him apologizing. "I was halfway there and had forgotten the title" he said.
I liked the car. It looked as good in person as it did in the ad pictures. The interior color turned out to be a tan when I expected to see light gray. The pictures in his ad sort of threw me the wrong direction I guess. Still, I wasn't put off by that detail. Anyway, I liked the car and bought it. I spent the drive home just "feeling" the car out--checking anything and everything. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the gas gauge had barely moved after filling it up in Bellingham before heading south for the 2-hour drive home.
After owning the car for only a week and a half, what do we do? What else? Road trip! Kind of a bold move for sure--especially given the nature of the trip. Driving an "untested and unknown" car to Wendover, Utah in the middle of August was ballsy. So we've returned from our trip and have put the car through its paces. The results? The mileage: Phenomenal. We got a couple of tanks in the high 30's, and two tanks that were over 42mpg! The AC worked great and kept us comfy. The cruise was so nice to have too. The stock Honda sound system sucks pretty bad and let us down, but that wasn't much of a surprise. The engine seemed to develop a little noise that made me nervous for a while. It never got worse. I get the impression that nothing new happened, but rather, possibly an additive that might have been masking the sound up until that time finally wore off. It's a theory. I changed its oil yesterday and put in full synthetic oil. I've never put that in a car before because it's so expensive (and it makes leaky cars leak even more because it's so slippery) but I thought I'd go for it and see how it does. Time will tell.
Was the car a good deal? No. It as a fair deal. It was a great car for the money, but it was still a lot of money. To me, a good deal is when I practically steal something. It's just that cars of this type and year are hard to find in good shape, and this was was what I was looking for. I hope it will serve me well and translate into a good deal.
It's safe to say it's the fanciest car I've ever owned in terms of options. Power everything, AC, cruise control, and all--it's way more than I've ever had. My cynical nature tells me, "It's just more to go wrong" while my optimist side (it's a much smaller side) tells me, "Shut up and enjoy it."
One thing is for sure: I am loving the 40+ mpg!
Here are pictures from the guy's Craigslist ad. Even though you can click them and view them full size, they're not very big. Still, you can get an idea what it looks like. You can also see what I meant when I mentioned the interior color in the ad pictures.
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