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Buying a Car
I wanted a new car. The choices were narrowed down to the Acura RSX, Mitsubishi Eclipse GS and Subaru Impreza RS. I decided on the Acura and am just waiting delivery! It was hard to find cars that fit what I wanted. Here's my somewhat flexible requirements:
Its amazing how difficult it is to find a stick shift. GM and Ford offer some manual cars, like the Grand AM and Focus, but only on the lower models with poor performance and no extra features. If you step up to the big V6's, like I wanted to do, you can only get automatic. Why? WTF? And I'd love the Monte Carlo, but its only automatic. sigh. So anyways, other cars I briefly considered, were the Grand AM, Alero, Altima, Mazda 6, Audi A4 1.8T, Golf GTI, Sebring, Celica, Accord, VW Jetta, 6 speed Corvette (ha ha yeah right!). I also considered getting a car through Leasebusters. Here people try and get out of their lease, but to make it good for you, they are usually willing to forfeit their down payment, to you, and give you cash. This also means that you only have to pay for the car a shorter time period, and can buy it out at the end. I wanted my first car to be new though, but this is an idea for the future. Forums: Forums are the single most useful tool for researching cars. They are
essentially chat boards, where people post and reply to messages online. Everything
is archived, so you can do a search for whatever you feel, such as reliability issues,
the 'out-the-door' cost, how much the dealers are willing to budge, etc. Essential!!
Acura RSX 'Premium'
Pros:
Cons: The RSX's predecessor, the Integra, is the single most stolen car in North America, higher finance and insurance rate. The Acura is a nice looking car with decent performance. Actually I think its
the fastest out of the three cars here. The interior is very nice looking with
leather seats and a modern dash. Its a head turning car, but also turns the heads of
thieves unfortunately. It has a chipped key (immobiliser) to make it harder to steal.
I was surprised at how roomy it felt inside for a compact car. The automatic was very
pathetic in performance, however the manual was much more fun because of the difference
in gearing between the two transmissions.
Mitsubishi Eclipse GS
Pros:
Cons:
The Eclipse is by far the best looking car. However I feel it is overpriced,
in that you are not getting nearly as much car for the price. It is very cramped, and
I'm rather short. Premium features that are available on the other similarly priced
cars are not found on this car, like ABS, leather and disc brakes. The car is
somewhat heavy and the 4 cylinder feels underpowered. I would probably have
heavily considered the GT if is was in my price range. A good thing was that
Mitsubishi was offering 0% financing over 60 months, a first for Japanese car
manufacturers.
Subaru Impreza 2.5RS
Pros:
Cons:
This car was a blast to drive because of the all wheel drive. I test drove
it while it was raining and it really stuck to the ground. I would have loved
to try the WRX, the 225 HP turbo-charged rally racing replica, but it was an
additional $8k and way out of my price range. In the future I may get an AWD
car, it was soooo much fun, but they are plagued with poor mileage. The main
problem I had, and why I dismissed this car early on, was the rather ugly
interior. It was full of plastic and cheap looking parts, and I wanted something
that I would enjoy looking at. The finance rate was several percentage points
above the Acura at 6.8% as well.
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