I’ve been contemplating a new car for a few months as my current 1998 Toyota Corolla is quickly approaching 200,000 miles and while it is running just fine, part of me is concerned that my 500-mile-a-week commute may be asking for trouble. Normally, I drive a car until it stops working and then replace it but depending on the nature of a major failure, it might be more of a safety issue than that of convenience.

While I continued to debate that internally, I decided that we should at least be familiar with the available options in the case a purchase needs to be made without the gift of deliberation and research.

With that in mind, we decided to take advantage of the kids staying the night at Becky’s mother’s house and go looking at cars. I figured the short list due to experience and reputation was the Toyota Yaris or another Corolla, the Honda Civic, and for comparison, the Ford Focus.

We visited Toyota and Ford on Saturday and to varying degrees got the sterotypical car salesman treatment. The Yaris is quite a nice car, but as is expected, is an example of minimalist design and engineering. I have modest needs and requirements so was satisfied but not overly enchanted. The Focus made no real impression over the Yaris and the sales staff was quite annoying.

Sunday, we hit the local Honda dealer and looked at the 2006 Civic and took a quick test drive. Unlike our experience at the other dealers, the salesman was quite low key and caused us to feel no pressure. The way it came accross, he figured that if we were going to buy then good, but if not, nothing he could do would change that.

We looked and did see one that we would have gotten, but I still couldn’t get around the fact my Corolla was still working fine. If we get it now, then it will sure to be paid off when we need to replace the CR-V and if it is kept in good shape, should work out just nicely to be used as my daughter’s first car when she turns 16 in 7 years. Pro and con, pro and con.

After a few minutes, I finally decided that I could easly spend weeks and months deliberating and debating. Why bother?

My new black 2006 Civic is in the garage.