This is Chelsea. Well, not exactly her, but the one I've picked out. It's a 2016 Honda Accord EX-L.
I've been trying to be sensible and keep my current car, but it really wasn't fitting my needs at this point in my life.
I've been driving Lexi, a 2013 Lexus RX350 for the last 3 years. It's been a great car. Never ever had anything go wrong with it. It only has 58k miles on it, is fully loaded with everything you could imagine, but it just wasn't checking all the boxes with what I needed.
I need an adventure car, so I got Val...
Val is awesome, but I don't really want to drive a truck around all the time that gets a whopping 10 mpg, so I needed an everyday car that gets great gas mileage.
I was able to sell my Lexus for a good price of $26,500. This allows me to pay off Val and make this deal happen. Yay!!
I pride myself on being well informed. I certainly did my homework on this one. I drove several Hondas. Everything from CR-V to the civic, the Accord Touring and the Accord Sport.
I really didn't want all the bells and whistles of the touring and the EX-L was that sweet spot of just enough gadgets to keep me happy and without the nav that I never, ever use in the car. I always use my phone because Google maps are WAY easier than any car GPS I've ever owned so I decided to save the money and get the car with everything I ACTUALLY use. That sounds awfully grown up of me, that's kinda scary.
I had been looking at this body style. It began a few years ago and I was ok with getting a car with 20k miles on it to get a good deal. I don't want to increase my monthly expenditures in any way. The goal here is to get what fits my needs, but also reduces my car payment.
The other incentive to get a car now is that Honda will no longer be offering the 3.5L V6. They will now be switching it all out to the CVT engine. All 4 cylinders, some with and some without turbo. I've driven them a few times and I don't really like them. I wanted the traditional V6. This was a great engine in the other accord we owned and put 230k miles on and also in the Pilot I put 100k miles on a few years ago. We've had our share of Honda and Acura cars and they've all been great cars.
I've spent countless hours reading reviews, looking at CarGurus.com, TrueCar.com, Craigslist, Facebook, AutoTrader, CARMAX and every other car website in between. You can never say I don't do my research. I finally came to the conclusion that the 2016 and the 2017 are EXACTLY the same. Even the salesperson couldn't really give me any changes that had been made. Now the goal is to find a 2016 with very little mileage so that it's essentially new. I found a couple that had 12-14k miles on them. They were around $25k.
And then it happened.....
A white 2016 EX-L, the EXACT car I was looking for. It was in San Francisco and BRAND NEW! They had a few left over that were out on one of their lots that had been overlooked. They actually had 8 of them!! By the time I started negotiating, they were down to 3. I had to act fast, these were not going to last long. I did some research again. Compared insurance and also the cost of financing since this was now considered a new car. I could no longer qualify for Honda's 0.9% because they only offer that on 2017. I decided to shoot for the moon and negotiate a better price to offset the pricing. Lower prices are always good. I did by research and came up with a price that if they agreed, would be far surpass any other deal I had been negotiating with the other 7 lots I'd been dealing with. Yes, I was dealing with 7 other lots. I know how this game is played. I get them all competing against each other. It makes for a great deal!
So, I called the sales manager directly and asked him to accept my offer of $25,900 and I'd be there on Sunday to pick it up. He had to ask the general manager and after an hour or so he called me back and they AGREED!! It's a $5,600 discount from MSRP. Wow!! I'm super excited.
I've been able to successfully sell my car and buy the truck and now this car and reduce my overall payments each month. It guess it does payoff to have an expensive car. We had put a large down payment on the Lexus, so I had equity in it. It definitely lived up to the reputation and retained it's value very well. Thank you Lexus.
I had a loan through USAA that was 3.49%, but thought I could do better. I've got credit scores over 800, so someone should be able to offer me something better. I checked with Golden 1 and they can do 2.99%. I checked with the dealer and they can't beat that with anything they have in house, so I secured that loan, got my pre-approved letter in hand and headed to SF on Sunday. Heather and Chanelle were leaving after our SOD adventure and they could drop Michael and I off at Walnut Creek bart. We would take the train over and then have no way back, so this deal better go through or we will be on the train back to Sacramento... :-(
We hopped on BART in Walnut Creek and were headed to Civic Center.
This is Michael's first ride on BART. He was nervous once he heard we were going in a tunnel UNDER the bay. Once we got going though, he thought it was cool. We got off at the Civic Center Station and began our walk down Market Street towards S Van Ness to the Honda Dealer. It was now lunch time and were both getting hungry. We saw a place called the Market Cafe and decided to check it out. WOW!! I'm so glad we stopped in there. So many places to eat and different kinds of food. Something for everyone. And a little market too!
I got a Market Cafe Sandwich. Turkey with Brie and Chutney on Ciabatta, warm.
My mouth is drooling just thinking about it again. One of the best sandwiches I've had.
Michael got a slice from the place next to the sandwiches that sells Pizza. He said this was amazing!
We then finished our walk to the Honda Dealer. Since the loan was done, the price was negotiated, it was a quick deal. I signed the papers and before we knew it, they had the car gassed up and Eduard was handing me the keys.
She's ready to go!
After we test drove it, she had a whopping 26 miles!
Here's that moment. I didn't know he was capturing it. He's handing me the keys and Michael is taking an awesome pic. Love this kid. Oh, and my new car!!
We drove back home and I was surprised to see the mileage get this high. 34.5 on the way home! Even had some traffic. With a V6 I didn't expect to ever see 30's. AWESOME!!
We drove home chatting about this and that and also about how easy this was to do. Michael had not wanted to go because the last time we went to buy a car, we were there ALL day! Not this time. I had it all worked out and we were on our way in a class. As we drove, we also talked about what to call her. For some reason, Chelsea popped in my head. I proposed that as the name and also asked Michael to come up with a name. He suggested Alayna. I pondered that and we decided we should keep going. I then went to Lucy. This was also cool because my grandmother's middle name is Lucille and it could be a little part of family heritage along with it. But Lucy didn't fit either. We kept coming back to Chelsea.
After we got home, I looked up the meaning of Chelsea. I really think my parent's should have named me Chelsea. It seems to fit everything that I am. Funny how that happens. This solidified the name. This car will now be known as Chelsea...
She's even pretty on the inside...
Now nobody can sit in this car with light interior like this.
This is the queens car, don't even think about eating in it!! haha
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