Todd's New Car

Well, we went and made our second major purchase together today, and it was another car.  Not that we wanted (or needed) to go and get another car, and certainly not in the middle of the weird Tropical Storm rain that's been going on, but it had to be done.

I say "had" because it's true.  Back four years ago when I was just out of college and was barely making more than a part-time salary, the only option I had of getting a decent car that wasn't a 10-year old rust bucket was to lease one.  So I did.  And I really enjoyed the 2005 Altima sedan that I've been driving around all this time.

So the lease was up, and I really liked the Altima.  Of course, I didn't want to buy out the lease either, because that would just have been a LOT of money down the drain, so what was I going to do?  Well, originally I was going to get a Nissan Frontier pick-up, but then gas went crazy and something that gets 21 MPG just isn't that feasible.  On a whim, I checked the new Altima coupe and, low and behold, for the same price I could get 32 MPG.  Plus--and this was awesome--it came with the available stick shift.

In high school and college I had a Camaro that I loved that had a manual transmission.  It was a great car, but when I got rid of it at 140k miles I thought that with traffic and everything, an automatic was the way to go.  Not that the Altima disappointed, but there's just something about the stick that you can't get in an automatic.

So now that the lease was up, we contacted the dealer and they were actually able to locate one....ONE!....in the whole state that had the manual transmission.  There was one other one in Miami, but it was just sold.  So, in a weird convergence of everything, I got the exact car I wanted and a better price than I expected, and since there wasn't a darned thing wrong with the lease I didn't get fined there, either.

All in all, while we didn't really need a new car, I'm very happy with the one we got.  And this time, when the payments are up, I'll get to keep it!  SCORE!