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The Family Bandwagon

Our family is spread out across the country and across the world, and what better way to keep in touch than a collaborative digital journal?

Thursday 19 October 2006

Car shopping

Cheryl and I are in the market for a car. It's part of a longer term plan to buy a house, possibly next year. We've got three cars in mind which we've heard good things about - the Holden Barina, the Ford Laser and the Toyota Camry. Based on the amount of money we have, something in the range of 1995 and up for a year.
We're going to have a look at a 1997 laser this weekend, but based on last weekend I wont hold my breath. We'll let you know how we go with it all.. it's possible that if we come back for christmas we might even be driving :)
What have you guys been doing? And have you heard anything good or bad about the cars we're looking at?

9 comments:

  1. Hi guys, the Camry we have has been great. Maybe a little bigger than I thought you were after, but we got to Adelaide from Bendigo on one tank of fuel.Ours(98) now has round 85000 on the clock I think. The 84 Laser is still going strong.
    The 97 sounds a good price and when you get the RAA check up, you'll know if it is a good buy. Allow some money for unexpected expenses as well as insurance.

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  2. If we are ever in a position to buy a new car I would look at the Camry too - besides mum having one we have heard good things about the Camry, and we have kids to fill it, so a better size for that too. Haven't heard about Barina's, but Laser's are good little cars. Going to be interesting driving the family around in the 84 Laser, especially with Adam in the car! :)
    (Have you heard about our car trouble yet? No Magna for us for much longer... we hope)

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  3. Well, we got the car checked and basically it's not worth buying. There's a few fixable things, which would have been fine.. but they said the state of the motor suggests it hasn't seen a service in a goodly while, and that, the transmission, and the cv joints would all possibly die in the next few years. Which isn't a risk we can take - we can afford to buy and maintain a car, but we can't afford to replace one.

    So we're back where we begun, except a little wiser and $200 lighter.. it's a bit sad really. I'll keep you informed of any more updates.

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  4. Well, round 2 is over and we've signed a contract. The contract is under the condition of an inspection, with the used car place fixing up any warrantable problems. It's a 97 Toyota Corolla CSI sedan.. a bit bigger than we were originally looking for, but also better for longer trips and the like. And it's got very low kms. The inspection is on Tuesday, so we'll let you all know how it goes after that.. lets all cross our fingers and toes.

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  5. Continuing the saga.. the mechanic's report was mostly good. The used car place has some repairs to do, but they have to pay for that :) And then it'll be equivalent to having just had a service, so it's 6 months before we need to have it looked at.. and he said the front tires and the rear brakes have about a year before they need looking at too. And that was about it, really, everything else was good.

    So.. this morning the car was going to a mechanic to fix up all the stuff needing fixing, and then they'll call us and let us know. In the meantime Cheryl is looking into insurance options. And i'm doing nothing, hooray!

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  6. Insurance is sorted (thanks Cheryl), car is available, we just need to take in a cheque and we can drive it home. It's rather exciting :)

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  7. Final hiccup - he hadn't registered the car. We drove it home yesterday with the trade plates, and he's going to register it this afternoon for us.

    In SA when you register a car you don't change number plates like we did in Vic. It's quite strange. So you can judge the age of a car by the letters at the start of the numberplate.. ours is a V, there's lots of Vs and Ws around now.

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  8. wow.. didn't know that buying a car was such a hassle! i guess it's been a while since i bought my blue gemini (Cilla).. and buying the Laser was easy! heheh..

    Hope it drives good!

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