Saturday, July 31, 2010

Farewell Trusty Steed

For the past six years, my family has been truly blessed to have an Acura MDX as our family car.  It has served us tremendously well, and I will forever have countless good memories of the road trips and adventures we have embarked on together in our MDX. 








Heck, we've had the MDX as long as my Youngest can remember.  He was only 9 months old when we moved from San Diego to the DC area and bought it when we arrived here.  Our Eldest was only 4 years old, so he vaguely remembers the car we had in San Diego, but not much.

My wife and I have developed a pattern of alternating upgrading our cars over the years.  We have orchestrated it so that we have one car that's paid-off and one car with a monthly loan payment.  Each time we pay one off, we shop around to upgrade the other one.  This time it was my wife's turn to upgrade.  We still loved our MDX, but we just had the 75,000 mile service done and it is going to need some work in the not too distant future, so we decided it was time to upgrade again.

Farewell trusty steed, you have served us well.
 (sniff, sniff - dabs at corner of eye)

Up next...

Adventures in car salesman psychology tactics.
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4 comments:

  1. TaborJuly 31, 2010 at 12:10 PM

    Unlike you I change my car when it starts costing me $1,000 a year in repairs annually. My Mazda is now over 10 years old and still running pretty darn good! No heated seats, satellite radio, blue tooth...but then in a few years I can upgrade to all that consumption pull.

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  2. JayJuly 31, 2010 at 10:33 PM

    Only 75k miles? I guess in Hawaii you didn't add that much, eh?

    That's about how many miles the cars I buy have on them.

    Good luck with the replacement. I recommend either use a buying service (credit union or USAA) or do as I have done and pick the car you want, contact several dealer's internet sales reps (most have someone who handles those not-in-person deals) and tell them what you're looking to pay. Make a fair offer, tell them it will be the easiest sale of their lives, and get in and get out quickly.

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  3. Sam S.August 3, 2010 at 2:47 AM

    I love the 2nd pic...that's just too cute! The MDX's are nice. Our neighbor in KB had one that I got to experience frequently. The Pilot is nice too...but we buy american.

    We do the same general rotation for cars. I'm up next and am already eyeing the Dodge Journey! Looking more forward to the sales tactics post since, ya know, that used to be my bread and butter. :)

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  4. SageyAugust 3, 2010 at 11:00 AM

    Tabor, that is why we traded in the MDX, it had gotten to the point of every time we took it in for an oil change it needed x, y and z done in the near future with each item costing over $200. Figured it was time to trade it in while we could still get some good money for it. We didn't trade it in because the other car was paid off, it was just nice that it was and we could do it with not having two car payments.

    Jay, we used USAA but they give you three different dealers and even then the dealers can be sleazy. :-)

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