New Car for Sheila

Sheila's new car!

Sheila's 2000 Buick LeSabre has been slowly crumbling away over the past year or so.  The engine is great, the fuel economy is as good as most new cars, it drove well in the snow and it has been very reliable but the frame and everything underneath has been corroding away due to years of exposure to road salt.  

The car has a slow fuel leak...  the brake lines are soft and in need of replacing but there is no area of chassis solid enough to hold the new brake lines... the car's jack can no longer lift the car because the frame where the jack is supposed to lift the car crumbles when you touch it... and, we've been delaying a much needed replacement of brake rotors because we knew this car is at the end of its life so we were avoiding spending some hard-earned money needlessly. 

As a result, we've been searching online for a new car for the past few weeks. Neither one of us really cares for car shopping.  Actually, we both hate it! Searching for a private sale would be torture, time consuming and frustrating. Traveling from car lot to car lot, fending off over-eager salespeople was something we preferred to avoid also, however, finding a newly inspected car that has been cleaned and detailed, in no need of repair, and has all the required documentation and warantee would most easily be found on a dealer's lot.  We opted for looking for cars only available through dealers.

Cars.com really is a great website for car shopping in the comfort of your living room.  We knew we wanted to buy from a dealer so we checked all the dealer listings daily.  Searching was made easy by using an advanced search feature that allowed us to pick all of our criteria.  This past Friday, Sheila found a nice, low mileage Hyundai Sonata that had only one previous owner and a free available Car Fax.  We decided that if it was still available on Monday morning, we would go check it out.  

We had already missed out on a really nice Volvo by waiting an extra day so we were taking a big chance by waiting until Monday.  Fortunately, this Sonata was still available when Sheila called the dealer this morning so we quickly made our way to the dealer first thing this morning to check out this car!

About five hours later, we were emptying Sheila's Buick LaSabre and putting the license plates on a new Hyundai Sonata!

That is the kind of sale we like...   quick and easy...  reasonably priced...  and ready to be driven off the lot!  

Needless to say, Sheila is very excited! Even my 2001 Honda Accord is happy because we can now lighten up on using her as she also gets up there in years!

Next, I will need to figure out how to lug around three kayaks on the roof of the new car...