My Old Car Finally Died from Planck's Constant

I was only 500 miles short of 200,000 miles on my 1989 Honda Civic before it finally died on me. I've had to spend about three or four hundred dollars annually in the past few years to keep it alive but now my mechanic says it'll cost 900 bucks to put it back on the road. Sometimes you just gotta know when to fold 'em.

I only used the car to drive ten miles into the City so it didn't need to impress anyone. Both my wife and my two boys have nicer vehicles than I do. In fact this evening when my son drove us onto the Nissan lot a bunch of salesman came out hoping he was trading in his car, a 1997 Toyota Supra limited edition (they only made 2,000 of that model that year) but he always turns them down. Amazingly he can sell the car for more than he originally paid - he's been offered more than forty grand for it. My wife would never let me buy a chick magnet like that and here I'm using clean language for what the car is actually called.

So I settled for a plain, white 2008 Nissan Versa for a little over fifteen thousand semolians which at the exchange rate of one dollar per semolian is a good deal indeed. It averages 32 mpg on the highway or as high as 38 mpg if you drive like my grand aunt. I wanted to get a hybrid to be a good green person but the economics even with the cost of gas at four bucks a gallon didn't make sense for me.

I also looked at the Honda Fit which costs a grand more but has a better resale value and which would have made it cheaper over three years if I were to trade it in within that time period. But I intend on keeping the car for at least ten years and consequently I won't recover the extra cost of the Honda.

So much calculating to go through before buying a car! It took about an hour and a half for the haggling and paperwork. Thank God I didn't have it financed otherwise it would have taken an extra hour for that to get done. It also seems that every time I do finance a car a few thousand dollars gets added on somehow and by the time I finish a $15,000 car costs almost a half a million dollars in finance charges.