Greg and Kat's blog

I have finally become an adult. I own my own car! I know Greg and I have a car back in Vancouver, but I’ve always thought of that car as Greg’s. Mostly because he bought it and he drives it. But this time, “we” bought the car for me! When I say “we” I mean Greg because I haven’t actually received a pay check yet (I get paid at the end of the month).

Car shopping was an experience. We drove to Raleigh where Greg had already checked out some used car dealers. We went to the one that had 3 Corollas on the lot. 1 was a stick-shift, which Greg didn’t notice the first time, the second one the sales guy said had been in a recent accident, and the third we test drove and took to an independent mechanic for a used car inspection. It’s a 1996 Corolla that is the same color as the Corolla in Vancouver. The inspection came back fairly good, so we went in search of somewhere with an internet connection to get a “carfax” report on the car. Finally found a Radioshack where Greg talked the salesguy into letting him use the computers there to get our carfax report.

The next thing we know, the report says: WARNING! or ALERT! or something equally as ominous. The car has been “rebuilt”. Crap! So we have no clue what this really means. So, we drive back to the mechanic and talk to the woman who said that the engine and all of that stuff was okay and looked like the original. So, they thought it may have just been the body work. Hmmm… what exactly does this mean!!!

So we did the only thing we could think of. We called Greg’s dad. He said he would touch it. But, we thought… the mechanics were amazed that it had been rebuilt and seemed quite sure that the car was fine with only a small amount of maintenance work. Crap!

Then we did the next thing we could think of. We called Oli. I think knowing that Oli changed his own brake pads made me feel a bit better if he said it was probably okay. Plus, we pretty much knew we wanted to just bite the bullet and get the car, so we were looking for someone to confirm what we felt. Since this car only has to last at most 3 years, we figured it would be fine.

Back the the dealer. We talked them down the price of the maintenance repairs. We probably could have gotten $100-200 more, but meh. At this point both of us were exhausted.

We have to go back to Raleigh and pick up the car today because by the time we bought it and the dealer changed the tires (it needed new tires), the state inspection places were closed. Dealers in this state can’t sell a car without it passing the state inspection, so it’s being brought to the inspection place this morning, and then we pick it up.

Next obstacle – me driving it back to Chapel Hill from Raleigh. Call everyone you know in the Chapel Hill-Raleigh area and tell them not to be on the street this afternoon! Too stressful!

Update (Greg, 05/27): Not! More to come.