New (to us) Vehicle

As I have talked some about already, Brittany and I are eagerly anticipating the birth of our first child in December (Drake Scott). Any of you that know us very well are aware that we have for the last four years owned 3 cars all with 2-doors each. Now, I'm not a seasoned parent yet, but I'm told that a 2-door car + an infant = a headache (literally and figuratively).

As such, we set out to sell my wife's Toyota Solara - a car she has been very happy with and was sad to drive away from - and replace it with something of the four-door variety.

We looked at 3 options seriously: a 3.5 Nissan Altima, a V8 Toyota 4-Runner, and a Honda Pilot. We were searching for a used one of any of the three.

What we found was that it's virtually (not completely, but nearly) impossible to find either the Altima (something like 1 in 12 were made with the 3.5 - V6 engine) or the 4-Runner equipped the way we wanted it. Throw in some expectations regarding miles and price and we were pretty much striking out on these two.

Additionally, we came to decide that while the Altima would have served our needs pretty well with the first child we felt like the odds of wanting something larger if and when a second child comes along were pretty strong. Given that we'd like for Britt to drive this vehicle longer than we're likely to wait before making another person (as John Luzadder likes to put it) it didn't seem prudent to go that route.

At the end of the day my wife loves the 4-Runner and would love to have the available V8 (please forward any green complaints directly to her), but it seems that almost no one that bought one fully-loaded is getting rid of it this soon (can't blame them).

Finally, we found that while not just growing on trees, the Pilot could be located with reasonable miles and pricing that was manageable. As a matter of fact, the one we bought is the only one we actually test drove - goodness knows we looked at several dozen on the internet.

Four weekends ago when we were baby furniture shopping we also hit a couple of car lots. Joe Marina Honda at 91st and Memorial in Tulsa had a silver Pilot that was of interest so we stopped in and drove it. At the time we hadn't really looked at anything else and though it was exactly what we were looking for we declined to talk dollars with them on it.

After searching for other Pilots (and finding little that we felt was as good of a value as the one at Joe Marina) and mostly failing to find anything of interest on the other two types of cars we were looking at we decided to at least see what kind of offer they would make us. Initially we were not terribly close on dollars, but a couple of rounds of straight-forward negotiations (and an eerily silent phone when it came to calls about Britt's Solara) later we were pretty close.

Finally, on Saturday, August 15th, Brittany and I agreed on an amount we were willing to spend so I called and offered that amount "in cash" (Seriously, Dave Ramsey, I mean it). Twenty minutes later I was scrambling out the door to Arvest before they closed at 1pm - again, it was a cash offer.

We hauled ourselves to Tulsa, inspected the Pilot closely (it's a Honda Certified used car, so I knew the inspection they did had to be pretty thorough and it came with 12 months/12,000 miles bumper-to-bumper), cleaned the last of Britt's stuff out of the Solara and then waited (for like 90 minutes) for our turn to sign the papers and pay for it.

The whole time I've got this wad of cash in my pocket. Somehow it just didn't make sense to have the pregnant lady carrying the money.

When we finally got to the part where the finance guy asked us to write a check was he ever shocked to see actual currency. As a matter of fact, we even had exact change - which included 4 quarters left over from washing the Solara on our way to the dealership. A quick double-count later and we were on or way out the door - and making a mad dash for the Martina McBride concert.

I've included a few pics of the Pilot. It doesn't have a name yet, I'm not even sure how we'll refer to it - car, truck, SUV?

One note to add. Britt drove it to school for the first day of teacher's meetings (2 days after we bought it) and of course it rained. By the time she got in it to come home the roads were dry and as a direct result of it being silver (instead of black like her Solara was) it was still clean in spite of the rain. Long-live the silver Hondas.