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new car
I bought a new car today. I don't know what it is about buying a car, but I have been very anxious about the whole thing. I think it has something to do with knowing absolutely nothing about them, and yet being so dependent on them at the same time. I don't want to look at lots of different cars or compare features. I just want to go into a shop and pick the nicest looking one that I can afford. I had meant to buy a second hand car, but over the last few days I have persuaded Mrs McMuffin that we should just get a new one. I thought that if I had a new car then I wouldn't have to worry about having any problems with it for the next couple of years. In the end I got a very good deal, I think, on a Vauxhall Corsa. It's a special edition with air conditioning, electric windows, alloys, and all that sort of stuff (I guess our American cousins will laugh at the idea of a car without these basic amenities, or at least that is my fantasy about US cars.) I even went so far as to buy a servicing contract for the next three years, and I am having it coated in some stuff called Supaguard, a bit like Scotch Guard, but for cars, so I don't have to clean it very often. That should take care of everything for the next three years at least. The only problem is that it only has a driver side airbag. If we are ever in an accident, I will be fine, but poor Mrs McMuffin will not be. I will feel a little guilty about that, but when I asked about having one fitted, I was told that it would be a factory fit which would take about 8 weeks for delivery. I opted to do without the airbag so that I could have the car in 2 weeks. Was that bad of me? Anyway, I don't intend to be in any serious accidents, so we should be fine.
I did have a funny moment when I thought I had slipped into an alternative reality. As the salesman was running through his spiel he came to the point where he tried to persuade me to have insurance which was a little bit odd given that the car had free fully comp. insurance with it as part of the deal. I listened to him and gradually I realised that he was trying to sell me insurance on my insurance. I immediately stopped listening because that way lies madness.
mr mcmuffin on 15 Mar 2006 @ 11:26 PM ✲ Permalink
Comments
Congratulations on your new ride. For the record, I was 48 years old before I got my first car with electric windows and I'm never going back to cranking again.
Posted by: Karan | 16 Mar 2006 02:24:24
Two points. Airbag - let Mrs McMuffin drive. Corsa - biiiiiig mistake. Once you've got the pram in the boot, where is everything else going to go? With children you need space, space, space. And wipe-down seats.
Posted by: David | 16 Mar 2006 10:26:56
Oh, no, David, I couldn't possibly allow Mrs McMuffin to drive MY car. Getting the Corsa is all part of my anxiety, I think. It's a car that I am familiar with. My last car was a Corsa and I never had any problems with it at all. The space is a bit limited but we have another bigger car, so we should be alright. Anyway, how much space can a teeny, tiny, little baby take up?
Posted by: mr mcmuffin | 16 Mar 2006 10:53:14
I agree, David. I have already told Mr McMuffin that we are travelling as a family in my car, as I do not want our son to be left motherless because his father was in too much of a rush to order an airbag. I have also made him promise not to remarry or give the boy another 'Mummy' if anything happens to me. That should make him drive safer, much as I drive him mad, he does like company!
Posted by: mrs mcmuffin | 16 Mar 2006 12:29:41
I can assure you, having owned a small hatchback with manual gearbox, manual windows, and no air-conditioning, that Americans are in fact baffled by such things. Mostly the lack of air-conditioning; it was manageable in Los Angeles but not in New England (humidity, you see.)
No, what baffles me is having to wait two weeks for a fairly straightforward car instead of driving away with it that day. When we bought the "family ride" before first child arrived, the salesman was pleasantly surprised that we were willing to wait for nearly a week while he had one sent down from Pennsylvania. (Not my idea, but I was observing the golden rule of "don't provoke the pregnant wife.") One of the reasons that flashy cars immediately sell out their production runs for the US is not because customers have ordered them, but because dealerships have ordered them so that customers can walk in and leave 2 hours later with their Bentley, should they feel so inclined.
Posted by: Colin | 16 Mar 2006 20:04:04
That bothered me too. This is a bog standard car. Even as I was signing the papers I was thinking that this whole thing had been set up for the convienence of the dealer and not me. But, hey, 2 weeks isn't such a long time. Now all I have to work out is how to get my iPod to play through a CD player. The future does not look bright.
Posted by: mr mcmuffin | 16 Mar 2006 21:25:20
iPod in the car... a challenge. My car is old enough to have a standard fit tape deck and I've been using an adapter, but the tape deck itself is crapping out. I tried a Griffin iTrip but it doesn't seem to match well with the antenna that's concealed in the window. So I am now reduced to sending positive vibes to the tape deck to last for a while longer...
Posted by: Colin | 17 Mar 2006 06:34:31
My apologies for dissing the Corsa, which is of course a fine piece of German engineering. It's just that we had an old VW Golf when the first child came. We even had to take the wheels off the pram to get it in the boot and anything else of any size had to go in the back and could have flown around in a an accident. We now have a very old VW van which is so spacious that you never have to stop - the passenger just walks back to mop up the sick in emergencies.
Posted by: David | 17 Mar 2006 07:23:30
Sick? Will there be a lot of sick? No one has mentioned the sick before.
Posted by: mr mcmuffin | 17 Mar 2006 07:33:27
I bought a little box that connects to the back of the stereo. the front of it has two RCA female receptors. I bought a cable that has an output that you put to the headphone recepticle of the iPod and the other end has two Male RCA jack connectors.
Viola. Perfect Mp3 loveliness.
Will come back with a photo of my setup as well as alink later. Must review recipes for tonights class.
Posted by: jo | 18 Mar 2006 17:04:09
