Shopping For a New Car

This week I went shopping for a new car and boy let me tell you it was exhausting and enlightening. There are so many different cars to choose from, not only which brand but the options each level comes with.  Expensive…to say the least.  I thought maybe I would look for an American made car, but the American cars are more expensive than the foreign makes.

Cars Were All-American

My mother and uncles had American cars back in the 50’s, obviously because that’s all we had to chose from at the time, unless you were extremely rich and could afford the expensive foreign brands. I remember sitting in them with my cousins and pretending we were driving.  My mother had an old 1929 automobile that she called Cricket which I vaguely remember. She traded it in for a navy blue Cadillac in the early 1950’s.  That car was a status symbol for her, it proved to everyone she had succeeded.  My parents had a butcher store in the late 30’s early 40’s.  I remember her telling me she would skin calves in the store when she was nine months pregnant to me.  My mother loved that butcher shop, but my father hated it.  Eventually that would be the divider that resulted in their divorce.

My Uncle Pete had a blue Buick in the early 50’s (I guess my family was into blue). It had huge whitewall tires and sitting in that car was like sitting on your living room couch; so roomy and comfortable.  We didn’t have all those panels and consoles separating the driver seat from the passenger seat. It was like one long couch.  You could slide next to the driver and get a third person in the passenger side.  Not at all like the automobiles of today where they try to cram the latest technology into as little space as possible.  Although I do have to say I love all the new safety options…backup camera and beeping, blind spot sensors, automatic emergency braking, and four-wheel drive.

They didn’t even have seat belts back in my day and babies didn’t sit in car seats or boosters.  Even in the 70’s when I had my Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser they still didn’t have any safely features.  My kids sat in the back seat or in the cargo area looking out the window. Sometimes they’d actually shout out to me “go faster” when I went over big bumps so the car would bounce and they would leave their seats! Buying a car back then was so much simpler; the cars came in very few different models. You drove the car, you stopped the car, you parked the car.  Can you imagine, cars today even have parking assistance and automatic parking. A camera to help you park!!! What will they think of next?

Blue Car Tradition

With my last several cars I had to consider a 7 passenger vehicle because of the size of my family. We take a lot of trips and otherwise we would have to take two cars whenever we traveled and that’s a pain. My grandson Luke wanted a blue car…his favorite color.  I looked at several cars…the Honda Odyssey (which I have now and love) Kia Sedona, Kia Sorento, Chevy Traverse, Chrysler Pacifica and although they were all great options they were extravagantly priced with so much money down.  My final decision where I got the best price with no money down was the Nissan Pathfinder and it’s BLUE.  Can you imagine the average cost of a car in the 1950’s was $2,200?  That’s how much one of the options costs today.  You can’t get squat for that in a new car nowadays.

All things considered, I think I got a good deal.  In keeping with the tradition, the car is blue and best of all my grandson Luke is happy.