The Taurus is Dead - Long Live The... er... Taurus?

I set out today to find myself a functioning used car. I had a price range in my head, and a couple dealers, too. Cars cost less in the next county, so we headed that direction ("we" being Dad, my sister, and I.)

First up was a possibly affordable Fusion I'd seen on the internet. The price and mileage almost seemed too good to be true, but I figured I'd see what was there; even if they didn't have the Fusion, they might have something else. After some frustrated lot hunting, we spotted the place I was looking for... and eventually found a place to park. I climbed out and looked at what seemed to be a fairly anemic car section (though their Truck/SUV lot across the way was bursting at the gills.) A salesman swooped down, and I asked about the Fusion I'd seen on the internet. The black one. He waved us over to a black Fusion... which was roughly four grand more than the ad said. Um, no thank you, but I checked your site this morning and there's supposed to be another one around here somewhere. He shrugged, not that interested, and went to ask his manager about it. Unsurprisingly, that car had "just been sold yesterday," but they had a nice Ford Five Hundred on the lot... with over 50,000 miles on it... for more than the online Fusion had been advertized to boot. No, thank you. By the time I'd looked up from the spec sheet to ask what else they had, he'd left. Evidently, he'd decided we weren't worth his time. I wish I'd known that before we hunted all over town for their lousy dealership.

So, back in the car we piled to head further afield. We were halfway between a no-dicker place we knew of, and a place where the sales taxes were less horrendous. I'd seen a couple things on the internet at both places, but I figured by now that the internet wasn't going to be particularly helpful in my car hunt. Figuring we could hit the no-dicker place on the way back, we wandered to yet another Auto Row. My sister had bought her Sable from one of the dealers here, so we figured we'd start there, for lack of a better plan.

As soon as we parked, a salesman descended. I mentioned what I was looking for and about the price range, and he led us over to a newer Taurus with not-so-bad mileage. It looked clean. It smelled clean. Nothing appeared to be dripping or pooling or torn or worn. I took it out for a test drive, and it handed much better than the Focus I'd tried out earlier in my car hunt.

Back at the dealership, I thought about it.

I could hunt all over for another car and possibly find something a bit better, though if my internet hunting had taught me anything about the going rates, this was a pretty good deal.

It was right in the range I was looking for, and it had everything I wanted except ABS (I think - there's a chance they're some sort of electronic ABS, but for some reason nobody could clarify that for me.) I even was okay with the color.

I was really, really sick of looking for a used car.

So some numbers were crunched. Calls were crossed. Faxes got lost and found and messed up. Umpteen billion forms were checked and initialed and signed.

And in the end, I came home.

In a newer Taurus.

I'm still going to get it checked out by our own mechanic, just to be on the safe side. And I'm still going to find a way to pay it off ASAP (I triple-checked to be sure that there would be no penalties for early repayment), even if it means borrowing from and repaying a relative at a lower interest rate. And I still have to finagle insurance in my own name. Hopefully, though, that's the end of the car hunting for a while.