New Car

We bought a new car today! We usually keep a car until we're having serious trouble with it. But our son totalled his car a few months back (not his fault, and thankfully no one was hurt). He drove a 1996 or so Isuzu Rodeo, and it wasn't worth much. When he and my DH went shopping for a replacement, there weren't any decent cars for the amount of his insurance settlement. So we offered him our car. We have a 2000 Chevy Impala with about 102,000 miles on it - so it's not new by any means, but it's still in good shape.


We've been shopping since Monday. We looked at an Impala first, because we've really liked the service that the dealer provided and we've not had a lot of trouble with it. It was ok. Then we looked at the Camry, and I fell in love with the XLE. Problem was, it was about $6000 more than the Impala! Then we looked at the Accord. It was ok too, but neither of us liked it as well as the Camry.


Then we went back to Toyota to look at a Prius hybrid. Fascinating car - very different. I liked some things about it, but it was very uncomfortable. There wasn't enough room for my knees - and I'm only 5'4". The problem is that I sit pretty close to the steering wheel, and the seat wasn't power, which means it wasn't adjustable in height. So when I moved the seat where I wanted it, my knee hit the steering column.


We talked it over, and there was no way DH wanted to spend the extra $6000 for the Camry XLE. So we started looking at the lower priced models. I have back trouble, so the comfort of the seat is pretty important to me. None of the models other than the XLE offered power passenger seats, and the angle of the seat in the other models was pretty uncomfortable for me. We even took an LE home with us last night, but it just wouldn't work.


Today, we returned the LE and realized if we wanted a Camry, it was going to have to be the XLE. We got a better price, but it was still way higher than the Impala. Then we went back to the Chevy dealer so I could check out the passenger seat again. I really thought it would be similar to the Camry LE, because it also wasn't a power seat (our current Impala has power seats on both driver and passenger side). But it was more comfortable than I thought it would be (darn it - I was really hoping it wouldn't be, because then we would have bought the XLE). I had to be honest about it though. We made a deal on an Impala LT1, which is a lower model than the one we've been driving.


Next time we buy a car, I'm going to shop first and not show DH any of the cheaper ones!!


Here's a picture of an Impala. This one isn't ours, which is white. Plus I don't even think it's the same model, but it looks pretty similar. Our dealer didn't have this one, they found it in their locater, so we don't have it yet. Hopefully tomorrow.