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In the end, I decided not to buy the 2001 Honda Civic that had caused so much trouble for me and Sales Guy. I went instead with the Avalon. esrblog and I went to the dealership yesterday morning to sign the papers.

The Avalon in question, in case you missed my recent post that mentioned it, is a 2000 Toyota Avalon, a largish four-door sedan with a lot of nice options and standard features, such as power everything, a combination CD-cassette player in addition to the radio, lights in interesting places, and an all-leather interior, among other things. It has an amazingly silent ride, brakes easily, accelerates well, and handles beautifully. Because it's a "certified pre-owned" car, it has a brand-new set of tires, and even comes with a limited warranty. Because it has 61,000 miles, and had been on the lot awhile, it was actually several hundred bucks cheaper than the Civic. My car is silver with a beautiful light gray interior. I have never had a car that looked so new, or so glamourous.

I've nicknamed it the Land Shark.

Don't get me wrong. I did not think that Sales Guy or anyone else at the dealership had unfastened and refastened the "check engine light" on the Civic on purpose. If they had done that, it would have been more in their interest to steer me toward the 2004 Honda Civic Sales Guy showed me last week, which cost nearly $2,000 more than either the 2001 Civic or the Avalon. They didn't.

What happened was this. I went to the dealership on Thursday night, prepared to buy the 2001 Civic if it still seemed to be a good idea when I drove it again. Sales Guy came to pick us up in the Civic, but let me do the driving on the way to the dealership. Thursday was very windy and cold here, and I noticed as I drove that the Civic, like my poor old Subaru, tended to shudder as the wind gusts hit it, a phenomenon which has always unnerved me. It also was noisy, and the ride was kind of rough.

Then I asked to test drive the Avalon again. It didn't shudder in the wind, and its ride was neither rough nor noisy. And I said to myself: Why should I pay so much money to get a car that's no better than my Subaru, when I can get a car that won't shake in the wind? That's when I decided to go with the Avalon.

My mechanic thought the Avalon was great. His only caveat was that the Avalon will likely need a bunch of servicing items when it gets close to 90,000 miles, to the tune (probably) of $800 or $900. On the other hand, that's two, maybe three years down the road, given the number of miles per year I usually put on my cars. Even with that future maintenance expense looming, it still seemed worth taking.

So now I'm Queen of Avalon. We'll see how long the car stays looking new, given Pennsylvania temperatures and driving conditions.