I Guess I Can Be Persuaded to Buy American

I've said several times that the only American car I'd ever buy was a Corvette. Well, there was one other, but I never thought I'd get one, and that was a Chrysler PT Cruiser. Something like this:

Welcome to Mrs. HolyCoast's mid-life crisis. We've been debating cars for a little while. Our Ford Explorer is getting a little long in the tooth and was starting to make old man noises, so we've been figuring out what to do. Our first thought was to get another minivan (we've had two previously), and in fact we went out and test drove a couple Friday night. For what we wanted, we were going to have to spend a bunch of money, and that just didn't sound like what we wanted to do.

Part of the problem with the Explorer is our 17 year old daughter is scared of the thing, and still hasn't gotten her driver's license yet. She's not allowed to drive my company car (company rules), so that left only the Explorer. Our driver training experiences in that car has been fraught with peril, so we knew we would have to get something smaller if she was ever going to learn to drive, and a minivan might not be any better.

Today we decided to run over to the Carmax lot in Irvine and see what they had. I had checked their website this morning and they didn't have any PT Cruisers in inventory (we were also looking at Nissan Altimas and other similar cars). We walked on the lot at Carmax and there she was - a candy apple red 2003 PT Cruiser Limited with all the bells and whistles you can get on that model, including the all important moon roof which the Mrs. just can't live without. It was love at first sight. It turns out the car had just arrived and been prepped that morning, so we were the first ones to get a shot at it.

Of course, we ended up buying the thing. We still have the Explorer, because sometimes you just have to have a truck to haul stuff around, but the Cruiser (now named "Ruby") will become the Mrs. main wheels, though the daughter can't wait to take her turn. She hasn't shown any interest in driving for months, but immediately wanted to take it out for a spin when we brought it home. I think we have a winner (and a future fight over who gets the car).

Just a quick plug for Carmax here. They make used car buying very, very easy. No haggle pricing, and great service. I'd highly recommend them for future used car purchases (in fact, I'll probably be trading the Explorer for something else pretty soon). Nice people, too.