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In my last post I asked my readers, should I pay off my wife's student loan or pay on our new car. After some help from my friends I've decided to take all the extra money I have to pay on our car. We bought a 2008 Hyundai Sonata back in November as a replacement for my wife's 2001 Pontiac Sunfire. The Sunfire might have lasted another year or two, but my wife was sick of it, and I wasn't comfortable having my wife drive a car that I didn't think was real safe. You never knew when it might stop working and she would be stranded somewhere. It also needed new brakes and tires, and it wasn't worth putting any more money into.
The Sonata, on the other hand, has great ratings on safety. It comes with six airbags standard, and if you've ever rode with my wife you would know these are necessary. Just kidding, honey. It's also what you would consider a family car. While we haven't started a family yet, it's in our immediate plans. This car has ample room in the back for gettting a baby in and out of a car seat. It only had 30k miles on it. The Sunfire had over 150k miles on it, although it was hard to tell because the odomoter had stopped working. We could've gotten something a little cheaper with more miles on it, but my Nissan Pathfinder is also approaching the 150k mark, so we decided we needed a car that was gonna last.
I spent over a month researching what car to buy. I knew we wanted a family car that was still a little sporty. And I knew we only wanted to spend a certain amount of money. This narrowed it down to 4 or 5 options. I then started checking the ratings on each car. Which car had the best safety rating, which car had the most reliabilty, and which car had the highest consumer rating. All of these things led me to the Sonata. We bought the car at a dealership my brother-in-law used to work at and he helped us negotiate a good deal. We've now had the car for a little over 5 months, and we absolutely love it.
If you're looking at buying a car let me recommend a little reading homework.
Have you bought a car recently? If so how was your experience?
3 comments:
Travis, nice choice on the car. When I was looking at cars last year, I almost bought a 2006 Sonata with 30,000 miles on it. It was a lot of fun to drive, had great pickup! The only thing that really stopped me was that the paint on the bumpers was peeling pretty bad. Keep an eye out - i've heard that this tends to be a problem on some sonatas - and if you catch it in time they will fix it.
Enjoy!
I have an '89 Hyundai Sonata. The car runs well-when it will start. About half the time I go to start it it won't turn over. The battery is good and the connections work fine. If I continue to turn the key over and over (and pray and curse at it) it will eventually start. Any ideas?
I don't know that much about cars, but it sounds like the starter. If that's the only major problem with a car 20 years old, then you're doing alright. Have you taken it to a mechanic?
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