After a couple weeks of looking, we finally bought a new car. It's a 2001 Toyota Camry LE, had 29,075 miles when we drove it off the lot. It's kind of a boring white color, and I think it'd look better with a spoiler on the back, but in any case, it should be a much more reliable car than my old Camaro was.
We bought the car at Dan Deery Toyota in Waterloo, from the second salesman we talked to. The first one tried that high-pressure crap, saying "If you don't take it tonight, I'm sure it'll be gone in the morning!" with one of the cars we were looking at. So the next time we went back, we bought from one of his coworkers, and he gave us dirty looks the whole time. Who falls for those stupid car salesman tricks anyhow? Oh, and the Hyundai Sonata we looked at was still there.
The car was a "Ceritifed" Toyota, so we got a 7 year/100,000 mile powertrain warranty, and then opted to spend $600 to get the wrap-around warranty to cover everything else on the car for 6 years/100,000 miles with a $50 deductible. So expensive car repairs should not be a problem for us for a good 5 years. I've never owned a foreign car before, but after doing a lot of research and reading everything Consumer Reports has to say about cars, the Japanese imports are outstanding in terms of reliability, so that's what we went with.
Holly tested the release lever inside the trunk, it works, and she says it also glows in the dark:
I wish it had leather, but we'll survive. Holly's a wimp and thought leather would be too cold in the winter.
