My New Car (YAY!)

Okay... the LLBean Subaru Outback that we bought in 2001 with 189,000 miles on it finally bit the dust. I've been nervously holding my breath every time I drove it for the last month. I wouldn't start in the Walmart parking lot three weeks ago. And two weeks ago--at a busy stoplight--it started to chug and buck and shake before totally sputtering to death. Not good.

BUT... Brian wanted to do all this research before we bought another one, and he spent three weekends buying different New Car Price Reports and assessing how much we could get for the trade-in and blah, blah, blah. Finally, he decided he had it all figured out, and we went to the car dealership armed with his folder of information and a calculator.

We test drove a really, really nice Outback that was the prettiest color: seacrest green. However it was a 6 cylinder (like I even know what that means). Consumer Reports says that the 4 cylinder, turbo engine has the same power as the 6 cylinder, is cheaper and gets better gas mileage. But they didn't have any of those on the lot.

So, the dealership had to order it for us. Unfortunately, the 6 cylinder that we looked at is a top-of-the-line car, and those come in exclusive colors, seacrest green being one of them. We couldn't get that color in the 4 cylinder. I had to pick out another color, and I wasn't real thrilled with any of my choices. I half-heartedly picked out blue and silver. However, when we picked it up, I decided it looks really nice.

Here's the car. It now has 32 miles on it!