Ode to My Car

My intention was to go to the Toyota Financial Services website, log into my account, and post a screen capture of the zero balance on my car loan. This dream was crushed when I discovered that apparently when an account is paid off it gets deleted from the site. I checked yesterday and everything was still there. But today, this is what I get:



Boo.

In any case, the final payment went through Wednesday and the car is all mine. Ah, the things that happen in three years…

Here we are the day I got the car:



As you can tell, I still lived in my (second) apartment in Oshkosh. Adam and I had just reconnected and he actually helped me pick out the car and negotiate the deal. I went into the dealership with my heart set on an Echo. Unfortunately as cute as they were, the Echo wasn’t selling well and was being discontinued. The selection was slim and the wait for a new one was long. So I had to immediately rethink things. The Corolla is the next step up and they had plenty of those. I could even get a purply-blue color. I took a test drive with Adam and Dana, our salesman. He encouraged me to floor it during the acceleration onto the highway. I was delighted by the 5-disc CD changed and outside temperature gauge on the dash. And power locks and windows. Those rocked too.

After we got back to the dealership we talked numbers a little. I had the recent graduate credit going for me as well as a special they had at the time for 0% for three years. I decided to take the weekend to think about it. Adam and I drove down to the Toyota dealership in Oshkosh that Sunday to check out their pricing and selection. Kolosso was definitely the better deal. So I went back and told Dana I’d take the car. He then informed me that although he had placed a hold on the car since I was interested in it, someone else had sold it already. BUT! They looked in their computer system and found another one from Janesville. They went down and got it and that’s the one I got. It had 200-some miles on it when I drove it off the lot on February 28, 2005.

This car was my first major purchase after graduating from college and starting my full-time employment gig at Bemis. It was definitely worth the investment. My previous cars, while generally getting me to where I needed to go (with the exception of that month when I was carless because of a combination of naivete on my part and incompetence on the mechanic/Saturn’s part), were nothing but headaches. I had no hesitation in making a fairly substantial commitment in order to get a brand new car with no sketchy history and an intact warranty. I considered it an investment in my peace of mind. Plus, according to Kelly Blue Book, even in “Fair” condition, the car has a trade-in value of $9,310.

So, here we are today:



I’m now married and own a house in Neenah. Lots has changed, but the car has been completely dependable and a wonderful departure from my usual car troubles. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve got people with some knowledge about cars around to look at things if something sounds funny. (Also doesn’t hurt that Adam’s dad works at Kolosso!) And Adam tells me he’ll do my oil changes going forward.

In conclusion,

It’s been nice to have a car that didn’t spontaneously combust on the highway (good times):



Or freak out and require me to keep a foot on the gas pedal at all times or it would die (that’s a ton of fun on a backed-up highway):



Or cause months and months of stress, thousands of dollars, and way too much of my time because of an inherent defective in Saturn’s manufacturing process and the complete incompetence of the mechanic recommended to me (no, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?):