And now...

the anticlimactic answer to the question one of you is desperately bored enough to wonder about if nothing else is pressing on you. Like the need to floss, which would be far more entertaining than...

MORONITUDE REVEALED!!!

[please hum suitably dramatic music]

This [representative image only] has been replaced by this.["]

Yes, I have pulled the trigger on my longstanding desire to replace my 1996 Civic with a newer car. Moronic because there wasn't really anything wrong with the Civic. The engine ran fine, I wasn't having any major issues with the car, and we owned it outright. It was, in fact, bought with cash, back when we had such things available to us.

But (and I may have talked about this before) I was tired of the car. It had next to no pickup, to the point where I routinely turned off the AC if I wanted to accelerate onto the highway. It should be noted that unlike some other places, onramps in the NY metro area are somewhat shorter than elsewhere. The average entrance ramp is somewhere between the length of a ruler and that of a yardstick. No pickup is thus something of an issue. And the car was ten years old, and we've had it for 7 of those ten years.

So the question came down to this. Was I prepared to live with this car, with only 94,000 miles on it, and drive it until it died? Or did I want to trade it for something I was happier with while there was still some resale value? Trade full ownership for car payments? Spend money or don't?

Obviously, the moron side of my brain won out. I didn't need to spend money, the Civic worked, all I really need is a commuter car, and I did it anyway. I'm still torn about the choice I made because I'm cheap. I didn't have a love affair with the Civic, after less than a day with it I'm happy with the Accord, so this wasn't an emotional decision about the car. But I HATE, I repeat, HATE spending money. I come from a long line of cheap SOBs. And yet I pulled the trigger anyway.

The buying itself was fairly straightforward. I've been talking with Mrs. about this for a while, so we just decided last week we'd go looking this past Sunday. So we head off to one dealer, and the guy just acts like he can't be bothered to talk to us. He hands us a shopping list of what they have, says "what do you want to see", he can't find the keys to the one we're interested in, and I said "just pull something around so we can try it." One dopey around the block test drive, and we say "we'll let you know."

On to the next, which is the same dealer we got Mrs.' car from four years ago. She suggested I try the new Civic just to see - the engine's bigger, and maybe for the same price I can have a new car, not a used one. So we get a salesperson (skinny, attractive, not very talkative or salesmanlike) and we take a spin in the new Civic. Definitely faster, nicer, digital display doohickies, but kind of uncomfortable - the headrest was poking Mrs. in a very rude way.

So we head over to the used, and I tell the guy there I want to look at an Accord. So we get in the nice blue one, and drive it around, and its not bad. We start haggling, and I get some heebie jeebies. What if that's not the right car? Mrs. says "look, there's the gray one we peeked into, take another drive & make sure." He pulls it around, we take another spin, and I'm sold on this one instead. It's cleaner inside, 12,000 fewer miles, just feels better. Back to the table, I say I'll make a deal if he'll give me the same price on the gray one, and we're done.

I feel like I did a pretty good job negotiating. We got the sales tax included in the price, and knocked that down to $2,000 less than their original absolutely rock-bottom asking price. Did I rob them blind? Not likely. Did they rob me blind? At least it was only in one eye. Add the lojack and the bumper to bumper warranty and I didn't end up off quite as cheap as I wanted, but I would have paid for those anyway even if I didn't knock the price down.

So I am the proud owner of a 2003 Accord LX. I'm not sure I made the right choice about doing this or not, but I like the car a lot and I would have had to do this eventually. I was bargaining from a position of relative strength, in that I had a car. I could walk away no worse off than I was before. The cost is an issue, and I still feel like I was being selfish wanting something else when the other car still worked fine. But as the great Hebrew sage Hillel is reported to have said, "Ve-im lo achshav, eimatai?" - "And if not now, when?"

I doubt the sage had in mind buying Hondas (used or new), but the choice is made and I'm pretty happy with the result. Considerably cash poorer, but happy.

[Incidentally, my hint yesterday said "round things are involved, but not the sum total of the story." I will remind car people in particular that there are numerous round parts on cars that should have given away the answer. Washers, air vents, knobs, etc. Maybe even one or two things on the outside of the car. I thought it would be obvious if you're a REAL car guy.]