The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Car Shopping

Our new (to us) car shopping adventure started 6 days ago. Justin finally convinced me that getting rid of my black 2000 Mustang GT and getting a newer much nicer stock 03-09 Mustang GT would be a smart decision. Why? Well a couple of reasons... my car runs fantastic tho! 174k miles and it still runs like the day she was made. Nevermind the motor blew up at 63k and was rebuilt. haha. Anyway. I used to race that thing EVERY weekend at the 1/4mile dragstrip in Baytown, now known as Royal Purple Raceway. And I went all out. Slicks on the back, sometimes skinnies up front, seats out for weight reduction. The backseats are currently just not in the car and getting them back in isn't exactly an easy task. There's also holes in my carpet from driving in heels. My bad. As good as the motor runs, mods & all, the transmission is starting to get cranky! And she's leaking oil from somewhere. So, we decided we wanted to start from scratch again.

So 6 days ago, Justin starts looking & test driving cars while I'm at work. We found a 2007 Shelby GT in black that was gonna be perfect. If they'd come down $2000. Trying to find something to match MY price requirements and Justin's mileage requirements was looking damn near impossible come Saturday. We drove 10 hours around Houston, using a full tank of gas, going to every dealership we could think of. We didn't find much. Prior to driving around we had searched auto trader across the US and back looking for options, and most of our local favorites had been sold already. Like the black Mach 1 we wanted at Lone Star Ford. That one was really crazy. We saw it online. Called. It had been sold. Tried to find it online again. It wasn't there. Headed over there anyway to see what else they had. Checked online. Saw the black mach again. Get there. It's definitely sold. I'm like, well stop making it pop back up online! lol We weren't mad, the lady there tried to help us out and find something at other dealerships. She found us a black 07 GT but the price was like 4k higher than another 07 we found in town with 30K less miles! I was like uh....no.  So we left empty handed to explore other options.

Long story short, Saturday was a waste of time. No one was open Sunday (not even in Dallas, we were gonna road trip!) Monday was spent looking online some more and calling places to see if they still had the cars we wanted. They didn't. Tuesday rolled around and after some more discussion, we decided to take a chance and not look at mustangs anymore (gasp!). We decided it might be better to just get me a new daily driver that was good on gas and just give me something to drive while we just plain fix my black mustang. It took awhile and lots of effort, but we narrowed it down to a few cars that I was ok with driving. Miata, RX8, 350Z, WRX, Lancer, Jetta, things like that. And out of nowhere a mini cooper got thrown in the mix (fully expecting it to be sold, and us finding something much cheaper). Again, nothing I found in my price range would satisfy Justin's mileage requirements. I said well, one or both of us are gonna have to budge just a little bit for this to work. In the mean time, Justin was still looking at some mustangs. Here's where the ugly part comes in.

Rewind back to Saturday. We had gone to Planet Ford on 45 thinking they'd have the largest selection for us (boy were we wrong). We told our salesman what we were looking for EXACTLY. Mustang GT/V8, Manual transmission, any color but red, silver, or yellow.    What does he point out and show me first? A silver automatic V6. *facepalm* So we knew this was a disaster. We let him show us a couple things "in the back" ...that had some wreck damage and lots of modifications. No thanks. Well Justin took a gamble on them again on Tuesday (our current place in the whole story!), and called them up because he saw a newer black GT online. I think it was like, an 07, with fairly low mileage (maybe 30k?) and it may not have had a picture online. He calls one salesman, tells him what he wanted to know, salesman says he will go hunt it down and take pictures, send them to us, and confirm the transmission type. Cool. This was first thing when the dealer opened. By lunch time, we had no answer, and Justin called again and go another salesman. told him the situation, the guy took our number and said he'd call us back. Well he called us back later that afternoon alright. He said yes, it was a manual transmission. He forgot to take pictures. and then we asked him the price. He said twelve nine. As in 12 thousand, 9 hundred dollars. We were stunned. We asked him, uh...are you sure?? He kinda stuttered and said yes, and we asked him to doublecheck. Because that car should've been at the lowest, what we wanted to pay 19,000 up to where some dealers had it at 24,000.  12,900 would've been impossible. Even at 100k miles, it'd be going for $15k at least. So we hang up. We dont hear from him again. We tried to call the first salesman back....voicemail. So we called the operator and THATS when we found out the car had been sold. like 2 days ago. The operator had to tell us that. Ridiculous!

So here we are after getting off the phone with the operator at Planet Ford on 45, and we set off to take a look at what seems like the best deal. A blue jetta at Westside Chevrolet. It was an older one (cause i dont like the new ones) with higher mileage than Justin wanted (I think it had like 72K) but a cheaper price than I was looking for (like $7800!), and if in good shape, was going to be worth it. What a joke! The front bumper was falling off. There were wires coming out of the incomplete dash. And it was filthy. They hadn't even switched out license plates yet. We left immediately.

I made Justin call Gillman Subaru north to make sure they still had the 2 other cars I was interested in. A mini cooper & a nissan sentra SE-R. We had a very pleasant experience there! Justin couldnt believe I was even looking at the mini. But guess what we took home!!!



My new daily driver is a 2006 Mini Cooper S w/ 6speed manual transmission! It's so much freaking fun! Every day I'm going to picture myself inside The Italian Job.

I know Gillman Subaru North lost money selling this to us, but the General Manager there was SO so so great. If the time comes to buy another car, we'll be heading there first, that's for sure.

I need a bigger garage.