After some frantic researching, Denisa, Tomas, and I went to Augusta on Saturday and bought a 2023 Honda Accord. As I noted last time I went through all of this, buying a car is far from a fun experience for me. Is it a fun experience for anyone? I guess maybe if you’ve just won the lottery or something, it would be a blast? I don’t know. For me, it presents a research question that’s impossible to answer.
“What is the best car to buy?”
There are just so many different variables. Even if and when you settle on a single make and model, there’s still the question of where you’re buying the thing. And once you’re there, there’s the negotiation to go through, along with this persistent worry that you’re somehow getting taken advantage of.
The first question for me this time was “new vs used?” Last time I’d gone with new, mainly because used prices seemed ridiculous. They were pretty much the same as new prices, and why pay more for a used car when I could get the same for a new one? This time, the prices had come down some. No clue why, but I wasn’t complaining. Then again, the sweet 3.9% financing offer I took advantage of last time wasn’t available either, so. (The good news is that my insurance was easy to work with, and they gave me a very fair deal on the totaled Civic. I had been worried I’d need to lobby hard to get that, and I didn’t have to do a blessed thing.)
After looking at the reviews and weighing my options yet again, I came to the not-too-surprising conclusion that I wanted to get another Honda. I just really enjoyed my Civic. It was a fun car to drive, and I wanted that back. I also probably was swayed some by the fact that having to make too many decisions at the same time feels overwhelming, and if I came to that conclusion a year ago, then why wouldn’t I reach the same one now? I also had a very good experience getting the car at Charlie’s Honda last time, so I was inclined to do that again.
Of course, it didn’t help that they didn’t have any used Civics on their lot that were recent enough that I wanted to buy one. Yes, they’re Hondas, and yes, they last a long time, but I still wanted something in the last few years, because I’d rather not go through this whole process again anytime soon. (Knock on wood.) They did, however, have a very nice looking Honda Accord hybrid in BYU blue . . .
Did I make some of my decision based on the color of the car? Maybe. It also helped that the car had just been reduced in price, and it was Honda Certified, meaning it would come with a 2 year bumper to bumper warranty. That all caught my attention enough for me to check out more information about Accords. We’d always gotten smaller cars, because . . . who needs a big car? I wasn’t too surprised to see Accords get almost universally positive reviews. (I used Google Gemini a fair bit for my research this time. I told it to do deep research into small and mid-sized car models, analyzing all major magazine and website reviews and then reporting back to me everything it found. I did the same thing to compare trim models of Accords and Civics. It saved a ton of time and the results were spot on.)
So after all was said and done, we drove over to Augusta for a test drive. I was really happy with how much pep the car had, despite being larger than the Civic. Better gas mileage, roomier, just a year older than what we’d gotten before, low mileage . . .
We bought it. And yes, some of that was also just a desire to be done with the process as quickly as possible, but I also felt like it was a good deal on a car I’d enjoy. I’m going to name it Cosmo, and I might even get personalized plates . . .