Cars...

Thank you God for gracious friends. Dustin drove up to the auto shop with me last night so that I could drop off my car, and he is probably going to drive up there again with me this evening. Even though he wouldn’t have worried about his car stalling once, he was understanding that Jen and I tend toward the cautious side and wanted to have the car checked out. What a stellar guy.

Now we may be forced to go shopping for a new car. This is a very painful process for me because I hate spending tons of money on used stuff. In general, the less you spend up front, the more you spend in the end, which is always frusterating. I do like looking at cars though, and I like thinking through the pros and cons of each vehicle. I’ve been able to narrow down my ideal next car quite a bit, so now I just have to try to find one of them for a decent price.

I really like the Subaru Outback and the Toyota Matrix. The Matrix seems excessively overpriced for what it is, and the Outback is not far behind it. My brother, the mechanic (yeah, the vagrant one), speaks very highly of Subaru, and he also likes Toyota. Those will probably be some of my first picks, if I can find them. Otherwise, I’ll be looking for a Volkswagen of some sort. After that, anything in our price range is fair game.

What is your ideal car? How do you decide which ones make the cut, and which do not?

Update @ 11AM – The car place called me to say that the diagnosis was fairly simple, and the repair was not too much. So my new car plans are probably on the backburner again. Just where I like them.