On Saturday just gone, I went to our local BMW dealership to look at new cars. I got it into my head that I wanted a new car, and although I’m not really a BMW driving kind of girl (ok, I’m not even remotely close) the only car with any real personality that is under stupid-thousand dollars is the BMW Mini. The plan was that I would go there, sit in the car, hate it and then leave without ever looking back. Sadly, this is not the way things panned out.
The car fit me. That was very unexpected.
For this to make sense, you have to understand how I feel about my current car. I love it the way that people love their kids. It is like a part of my family. When my car turned 30, we had a 30th birthday party for it (ok, that was more of an excuse to get drunk than anything else). I have always been convinced that no other car could ever come close to being as great or suiting me so well. So I wasn’t expecting to want to own this new car quite so much.
The worst part about this whole experience is that now I have that feeling where you decide you really, really, really want something, but you know that it’s not really possible - because it turns out that the Mini isn’t quite as affordable as I’d hoped. I could stretch my budget and afford it, but sadly I’m supposed to be saving to pay for a wedding, which means that I can’t have the car that I want. Now I’m sad. And I feel like I’m cheating on my car, but without really getting anything out of it. I’ve spent the last few days trying to think of a way that I can stretch my budget in a creative way so that I can afford a wedding and a car. I figure if I just stop eating lunch and cut off my phone and possibly the electricity in my house, then I might be able to afford it.
That sounds like a silly thing to say, but the salesman who was trying very hard to sell me the car said at one point
‘If you really like the sunroof, then it’s worth spending the money – after all, it’s only the difference of one decent meal a fortnight’
Can you believe that?! I guess at a BMW dealership they’re used to selling cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars – so I guess they’re a little blasé about the money it costs to buy one of their cheap cars and how important regular meals are.
I actually laughed out loud when he was telling me about some of the features that come with the car. It has interior lights that can change to a whole range of different colours to ‘set the mood’. I had no idea mood lighting was so important in a car – especially a car that is too small for anyone to get up to no good in.
I guess the only bonus of me being so amused by all the silly options you can get is that the fewer options you want, the cheaper the car gets. Maybe one day I’ll be able to scrounge up the money to buy one. Until then I guess it’s just me and my 30 year old kid.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment