Buying a car in 2021

Test driving his future car.

Grandson #2 turns 16 in September. That means I need to buy a new car.

Four years ago when Grandson #1 turned 16, I gave him my five-year-old Toyota Yaris and I bought a 2016 Honda Fit. As it turns out, buying a new car in 2021 is a very different experience.

The gift of a fairly recent, reliable car is one of my ways of helping these boys through college. A major worry I had as a college undergraduate at the University of Northern Colorado was having reliable transportation. The state of Colorado in the 1970s required motor vehicles to have a safety inspection every six months. And somehow my $500 cars always wound up needing one damn thing or another. Dopey, the 1961 Volkswagen Beetle, had a malfunctioning horn. A 1959 Rambler I owned seemed to always overheat. And it never seemed I had enough tire tread at any inspection.

I bought a green 1964 Volkswagen Squareback with a rebuilt engine with my last $600. (I was supporting myself and my family with minimum wage jobs at the time.) It ran well for two days and then the engine froze. I took it to my mechanic who said that yes, the engine was rebuilt - rebuilt wrong. It was going to cost me another $600 to have the engine rebuilt correctly. My only recourse was to call my dad and ask for a loan. I had always been too proud and stubborn to ask anyone in my family for money. He lent the funds to me and told me I could repay him after I graduated. But when I tried to repay him during my first year of teaching, he said to call the money a graduation present. My college education cost my parents $600. The car lasted my final years of college and even through my first year of teaching.

Kids in college have enough to worry about. I don't want my grandkids to worry about having a car that runs. 

From reading the newspaper, I realized this was not an auspicious time to buy a new (or used) car. Disrupted supply chains, computer chip shortages, and increased demand have created a shortage of new cars. I didn’t realize just how great a shortage until I started shopping.

My family rightfully thinks I am cheap when it comes to selecting cars. And they are right. I like buying new, but I also have a tough time spending much money on a vehicle. But as I told my daughter, I thought I would go a little crazy this time and instead of buying the cheapest new car available, I just might buy the second to the cheapest new car on the market. Maybe I am cheap.

I looked at Toyota RAVs - too big and too expensive. I looked at Honda HRVs - too little leg room and noisy ride. I looked at the Kia Soul - nerdy. Finally, just for the heck of it, I looked at a Subaru Crosstrek. It seemed to check all the boxes. Plenty of legroom. 30+ mpg. AWD. 1500lb towing capacity. Well rated by Consumer Reports. And the Sport model was, well, sporty looking. Of course none of the dealers had any cars actually in stock that one could purchase, but they usually had one to test drive, and for $500 you could reserve one that was supposedly in transit. 

Or, you could order one made to your specs - your options, colors, etc. Downside, it takes literally months for it to be manufactured and shipped. And of course any attempt at bargaining on the price is met with a contemptuous snicker from the salesperson.

Since I am not aware of any more grandchildren that will need a car for college for quite a number of years, I decided to sort of deck out my new Crosstrek Sport, adding nicer sound system, fancy floor mats, heated this-and-that, a rear view mirror with a built in compass. I got it in a purty blue color.

Supposed to get here sometime late October. Who knows, it might just be the last car I ever buy. Unless self-driving cars become practical and my family tries to take away my keys.