New Car!

After about six car shopping adventures to various dealerships around San Francisco (Colma, Burlingame, San Bruno, Berkeley, and Hayward), we finally found the perfect car!  Basically, during our search, we were looking for a vehicle that was:

(a) roomy - a hatchback or a good-sized trunk

(b) fuel-efficient - preferably over 25 mph on streets and over 30 mph on highways

(c) fairly new, so that it'd still be under warranty - 2006 or newer

(d) had fairly low mileage - under 40,000 miles

(e) that we could buy without financing - we hoped that this would be a bargaining chip, and we wanted to avoid any additional monthly expenses

I spent a good amount of time on Vehix, Kelley Blue Book, and Edmunds reading reviews of various cars and seeing what was available at nearby dealerships in our price range ($11,000 - $13,000).  Turns out, almost all of the contenders ended up being American cars!

The selection:

(1)

2007 Saturn Aura - beautiful wood-paneled interior; Mp3 jack; great gas mileage; comfy

downsides: Saturn is going out of business; already had a Saturn which I liked, but which had pretty poor pick-up; a sedan, so not as much trunk space

(2) 

2007 Chevrolet Malibu LT - really nice interior; seat warmers and power everything; good gas mileage; comfy

downsides: know a few people who've had problems with Chevys; a bit "old person"-ish, in Todd's words; a sedan, so not as much trunk space

(3) 

2007 Ford Focus - light, bright interior with six CD changer and Mp3 jack; hatchback; beautiful blue exterior

downsides: leather seats; mixed reviews about reliability

(4) 

2008 Nissan Versa - really comfy seats; hatchback; great styling

downsides: a bit too subcompact; very basic features (no power windows or locks!); not much pick-up

(5) 

2008 Pontiac Vibe Sport - great interior space; high seats; HUGE trunk; CD player and A/V jack; hatchback crossover; good gas mileage

downsides: Pontiac, like Saturn, may be going out of business; no Mp3 jack

which one do you think we picked?

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In the end, we went with #5!  We managed to get a GREAT deal on it at Berkeley Honda and, after signing the papers yesterday, and paying for it today, the car is ours!  I love it!

Now, onto the pictures...

View of the car from our apartment:

Interior, front:
Front view:
The glass part of the hatchback opens separately!:
A BIG trunk - yippee!:
I am already really excited about driving this car down to LA for the summer and using it as the perfect repository for all sorts of wedding stuff when we drive down for the wedding.  It kind of resembles a big, white wedding dress, no?  I think it's the kind of car where the people in the back seat will be just as comfy as the people in the front and, since the backseat folds down, we also finally have a car that can handle any ready-to-assemble bookcase that IKEA tempts us with!

Hooray!  This Friday, we plan to take our new car on an excursion...