Well I'm happy to say, my car search is over. I'm a car owner again. It's been about 6 months of borrowing my Mom & Dad's car and it was definitely time to give them back their car. Before jumping into what I bought I'd like to talk a bit about my method for finding a new (used) car.
Online Good, Offline Bad
At first I decided to check out some local car dealerships in Oshkosh. That was pretty much a futile effort because I simply couldn't find a car at a dealership that was within my price range (poor). I wasted a night doing that and then decided to turn to the internet(s).
I tried a couple different sites but finally settled on Autotrader.com. The great thing about this site was I could get really really specific with my searches. I already knew the exact types of car I wanted (Ford ZX2, Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla or Nissan Altima). I liked Autotrader but I was too lazy to check the stupid site everyday.
RSS Feeds For The Win!
I then moved to Craigslist thinking I might get a better deal on there, since Autotrader was mostly dealers. The great thing about Craigslist is every search you do on the website comes with an RSS feed. (Note the auto-discovery RSS feed icon in your browser is a broken link...Craigslist fail!) Here's an example of a feed I subscribed to - ZX2
With RSS feeds every time somebody posted a new car listing, I would be notified immediately in Google Reader.
Car #1
The first car I looked at was a 99 Ford Escort ZX2. It only had 70,000 miles on it with power windows, locks, etc. On paper it sounded like a great, affordable car. When the Cragislist poster replied to my inquiry I happened to get their first and last name.
Naturally, I did a Google Search on the person of interest only to discover they were recently in court testifying against a friend who had accidentally killed their boyfriend! Naturally my next step was the totally awesome
Wisconsin Circuit Court website where I discovered the seller had a long list of offenses, some even with the car I was looking at!
So I took a half day vacation and my Dad and I headed to Manitowoc to look at the car. It ended up being a huge failure. The car had hail damage all over it, the driver-side mirror was held on with a deck screw, the bumper cover was held on with bailer wire, the windshield wiper switch was snapped off and finally the hot/cold knob was laying on the console with tape on the back of it (the seller was trying to hide the fact that it was broken off). With so much fail in one car we ended up not even making an offer on it and just walked away.
Car #2
Having wasted a half of day of work already I was starting to worry about my car search. Checking my RSS feeds again a few nights later I noticed a car listed as being from New London. This sparked my interest. It was a 1997 Toyota Camry but was a
few hundred dollars more than I wanted to spend. Regardless I ended up calling about it and the next day Tyler and I checked it out. Tyler thoroughly looked it over so I made an offer. The guy ended up rejecting my offer so I talked to my parents
and they loaned me a couple hundred bucks. (Note I could afford the car, just didn't have enough cash on me at the time).
So I'm now the proud owner of a 1997 Toyota Camry. The car has 99,000 miles on it, power everything and rides really nice! It's also a larger car (which I like) but also gets good gas mileage since it's only a 4-cylinder. It's not perfect though. I'm already taking it in to get the tires balanced and I think a strut might be going bad on it as well. Regardless I think it should be a good car for me. I also posted a few picture in my Photo Gallery so check it out.
Enjoy Saves the Day's Cars & Calories via iMeem.
