Friday: looked for cars for 4 hours

Saturday: looked for cars for 6 hours, then went to chili cookoff. I wanted to be a judge, so my chili wasn’t voted on. But it did receive compliments from the other judges. There were a couple of nasty ones, a few really good ones (including mine), and several generic chilis.

Sunday: decided on car, bought kid gift, went to kid birthday party (Keith’s son Zachary). Went straight to dealership to do paperwork.

After much deliberation we decided to go for the Honda Odyssey. The Pilot (SUV), Toyota Sienna (van) and Kia Sedona (van) were also in the running. The Kia was nice in that its cheap, and comprable to the the Windstar features-wise, plus the 100k/10yr warranty. Oh we also looked at the Nissan Quest and…another Nissan I forget the model. The 04 Quest is umm…odd looking. It reminds me of old predictions of the future, like those old cartoons “Cars of the Future” etc.

The Pilot was pretty cool, but we decided for the money ($32k) you don’t get as much car as the other contenders. As far as vans go, the Sienna is the best. Unfortunately it costs the most. Toyota would not deal at all, the price given was the sticker price. We’d actually decided we wanted it though, and held our breath while they evaluated the Windstar for trade. They came back with $6500. We paid $22k for it in 2001 (1 yr old at the time). Edmunds says a 00 Windstar in “rough” condition should wholesale $7500-8500, we were hoping to be a little above that. Toyota went up to $7000 after much gnashing of teeth. And that’s still losing a crapload on the loan. POS Ford.

That pretty much broke the deal, we don’t have enough cash to make it work. So we regrouped and were gonna hit some other Toyota dealers up, and/or put $1000 in repairs on the van and sell it privately. Then I went and looked up resale prices on an 02 Odessey. There was one with 85k miles that was going for $21k. That made up our mind to get the Honda.

Went back to the Honda dealership. They would move on their price, and once we were happy with the deal, we had them check out the Windstar. They offered $8800 and we bit. (Did I mention it needs an O2 sensor, new water pump, and there is transmission fluid on the bottom of the pan?) Staci and I made under-the-desk high-fives.

The paperwork is 90% done. The one we chose was fresh off the truck and hasn’t been “unwrapped” yet, and is missing a lot of fuses and stuff like that. Picking it up tonight.