New shiny expensive toy

[reaubideux]

My wife & I are absolutely horrible about keeping cars, seriously, the longest we've owned any car is our current ownership of a '98 Camry that we've had for over 3.5 years; that's b/c it's paid off, we got a hell of a deal on it ($3K and it had 19K miles on it back in 2008), and we honestly do plan on running it until it dies or has a catastrophic failure where repair is more costly than the value of the car.

So, it was no surprise that after 3 years of owning a VW Jetta she started to get the itch for a new car. I've actually been pretty content w/keeping a car now that I got my Ninja but we had a few expensive maintenance costs coming up so that was a bit more of motivator for her to start looking. She liked the new Sonatas but they really didn't stir anything in her. I asked her to humor me and stop off at a Subaru dealership to check out the new Legacy and she obliged and she actually loved it. We managed to haggle our way into a nicely loaded Legacy 2.5i Premium. This'll be our (my) 3rd Subaru, previously owning a 2000 Impreza 2.5RS and then a 2002 WRX wagon (Rally Blue baby!) so I'm happy as hell to be back in a Subaru. I was even happier that she liked the color - pearl white - as I was hoping to get a white car to replace our black Jetta. Being that it is her car, I don't think I'll end up tinkering with it too much. Didn't come w/a sunroof so she's planning on getting one done next spring, it's a foregone conclusion that the windows will get tinted and I'll probably talk her into an HID kit since it has projector headlights and the kits are cheap. She's just happy to have a shiny new expensive toy and will be happy for the AWD come winter time. I've been enjoying the CVT transmission, no discernible upshifts or downshifts and it has a flappy-paddle manual mode which I've yet to try out b/c I've driven it all of about 25 miles.



Since we've been together (15 years) we've owned the following cars (starting in 1996):
'88 Mazda 323 (her first car)
'88 Beretta GT (my first car)
'93 Probe SE (my 2nd car, had 3 months, totalled; not my fault)
'95 Probe GT (my 3rd car, had for about 28 months)
'92 Tercel (her 2nd car, tranny grenaded on the 323)
'97 Talon TSi (my 4th car, spent waaay too much on this thing)
'02 ZX2 (her 3rd car, got tired of the Tercel after a couple years)
'01 Focus ZX3 (my 5th car, had it 9 months, totalled; not my fault, again)
'00 2.5RS (had it for about 2 years, found a good deal on a WRX, traded-in)
'04 Mazda 3 hatchback (her 4th car, ZX2 started having tranny problems)
'02 WRX (my 6th car)
'94 Altima (free car from my parents, sold the WRX, it was getting too expensive - mods/gas/insurance/maintenance)
'05 Mazda MPV (first "our" car but she drove it, got the "we need a minivan" syndrome after having our first daughter; traded the Mazda3 for it - worst idea ever! I loved that car)
'06 Scion xA (my 7th car, sold the MPV after barely a year)
'98 Camry (another "our car"; dad's friend's geriatric mother was getting put into a retirement home, 10 years old when we bought it w/19K on the odo, awesome deal minus the old-lady-drove-this-car body damage; donated the Altima as it was a getting long in the tooth but still going good at 220K miles.)
'08 Jetta SE ("our car" - but she mostly drove it; traded the Scion in for it)
'11 Legacy..... traded in our Jetta for it, mainly "her car" b/c I gott he Ninja; let's see how long we have this one, I honestly hope we keep this one until it dies, we're in a good position where we keep this for a few years, the Camry will probably be about dead by then, I can take over the Legacy as my car and she can get a shiny new expensive toy.

[Alex]

Nice Subie!

[CynicalC]

Great car. Before I bought my WRX, I was drooling over a Legacy GT Spec B but decided against it. If I had bought that over the impreza, I probably would have kept it.

By the way, if you're switching cars so often, you're better off leasing.

[Snake]

Congratulations on the new cage.

[reaubideux]

Originally Posted by CynicalC

By the way, if you're switching cars so often, you're better off leasing.

Actually, the Jetta was a lease. We leased for that very reason - b/c we changed so often - but a few things really ticked me off about leasing was that we had to pay the damn property tax. This made absolutely no sense whatsoever. I don't own the car, I'm essentially renting it. People who lease apartments don't pay property taxes on the apartment either so I shouldn't have to for leasing the car. Other was that we had to pay for licensing and inspections which bugged me b/c VW only licensed it initially for 1 year (max you can do in MO is 2 year tags) so we got stuck w/covering the remaining 3 years when they could've at least paid for the first 2. No one's fault but our own for not finding out these details prior to leasing but it was a bit frustrating.