New Used Car

It has been a while since I posted on here, so this blog post will be about a used car. It's a 1985 Toyota Camry DLX I purchased from a private seller I found on craigslist. A lot of my coworkers said $3500 was too high given the Kelley Blue Book range for the 1992 version (that's as far back as KBB went) is $800 to $1700 with the same mileage. The previous owners, an older couple, told me they took extremely good care of it because it was the wife's parent's car. She said her parents drove it only for groceries which explains why it only has 80k miles. They also kept it in a garage. It has a modern bluetooth thing instead of a cassette player and radio. The only problems I've noticed are: 1) the car creaks when I de/accelerate and it's probably the suspension system which should be easy to fix; and 2) the car vibrates when it's idle which I've read is because of motor mounts. Other than these two things, the car runs and looks great.

I've been wanting a form of transportation other than the metro to break up my drab experience. It's a huge pain in the ass to go anywhere on the weekends and after work because it involves a lot of waiting. I've been in the Northern Virginia area for the past 2 years and exclusively using metro and my bike to get around. I paid my environmental dues, I feel. Plus this thing has great gas mileage. The 80s boxy design is rad, and based on what I've read on the internet, Toyotas last forever.

There's a few things I want to do now that I have a car. I can buy a big plant at Home Depot and drive it home. I finally bought a blender. Of course, I could've just ordered these things online but these were small niceties that didn't warrant an online order. I can drive myself to an aquatics center to swim because the nearest one was too far for a bike ride, to Whole Foods or Trader Joes for healthier food, to places like comedy clubs, music studios, or record stores. It's also very cool to finally have a use for my small CD collection I've been lugging around.