you know you have been blogging for a long time when...

You are excited to get the letter saying that your car loan has been paid off, and you realize that you can link to the post when you first bought it with no money down.

(The car has remained in Madison. It makes absolutely no financial sense that I haven't sold it, although it's nice to have a car to drive when I'm back visiting, which when I left I expected I would do more than it turns out I have.)

acquisitions update, #10

(An indigo ink blue Corolla, albeit not an S series. Add a spoiler and a little more jaunty underbody design and you have it.)

I have bought a car. A "Indigo Ink Blue" Toyota Corolla S. I may pick it up as early as Monday, although a couple of things need to be done to it. I have the option then of accepting a $100 trade-in on my decrepit '93 Saturn. Received opinion varies on whether I should do this.

I believe that I did not get an awful deal. The only negotiating tactic I used was to not to ever look at all at a sticker price and to have the first thing I said after the test drive be, "So, what's the invoice price on this?" This resulted in the quoted price being about 3% over invoice and closer to invoice than MSRP.

I did have a strictly comparable color choice between indigo-ink-blue and black. I decided that blue seemed like more fun. I'm less sure about that choice, however, than the ultimate decision to go with the Corolla.

Key advice leading to the Corolla was given to my by my friend from Beauxbaton, who, while wording it more kindly than this, made the astute point that I seem to be sufficiently oblivious most of the time while I am driving that a substantial amount of the marginal increase in fun-of-driving between, say, the Corolla and Passat would be lost on me. So, I thought, even though I could afford the Passat, the difference in price could still probably be applied to something I would more mindfully enjoy. I did splurge on a couple of add-ons for the Corolla.

Click here to take a 360-degree tour of the interior of a 2004 Corolla.

acquisitions update, #9

A reader e-mails regarding the recent proposal that I buy the showroom model of the Passat I've been looking at:

A friend of mine who used to work for a new car dealership told me that 
the salespeople (actually, I think salesMEN would be accurate in this 
sentence) he worked with bragged about having sex in the cars on the 
showroom floor. I have no idea if this is true but it if so I would 
think a discount of $300 is not quite sufficient.

Well, that pretty much rules that option out.

acquisitions update, #8

I asked the Passat dealer a question about financing and about what they had available on the lot, and here is his response:

Hello Jeremy,

Thanks for getting back to me. I have some great news for you.
Volkswagen is offering a low 2.9% financing special for up to 66 MONTHS!.
Also, if you wanted the one on the show floor, and chose to sign up for it
this week,(you could take delivery any time this month.) we could offer you
an additional $300 off. If you choose to take advantage of the low interest
rates, at 66 months works out to be $xx9.10 per month. That's with $x000
down.

It ends up being a pretty sweet deal. We also have Fresco Green with
gray cloth on the lot. Thanks for the interest and let me know what you want
to do.

What's the deal with wanting me to take the car off the showroom floor? Does anyone know anything about that? Is it because all kinds of people have been in and out of it?