DarqByte

So the last two weeks have seen me drive quite a few vehicles. Laura and I decided a few weeks back to maybe start looking at a new vehicle to replace my ION. It’s not that I didn’t like my ION. Sure did. But it was getting up in mileage, they’re thinking about cutting the Saturn brand and there are really great incentives for vehicles right now.

So I test drove a couple Toyotas a couple weeks ago. I gave the Corolla and Camry each a shot. I’ve always liked the look of the Camry and I ended up liking the car quire a bit after the drive. The Corolla, not so much. Not really sure why I didn’t care for it much, but I just didn’t.

I then ended up test driving, as a few more days pressed on, a Honda Accord sedan and a Honda Civic coupe. Both were nice, but I was really impressed by the Honda Accord. It was a nice smooth ride and really roomy, I really enjoyed that car. It overtook the Camry as my top choice to trade the ION in for.

I should clarify now, Laura and I said from the get-go that we may not trade the ION in. If we didn’t find the right deal and something we really wanted, then we just weren’t going to trade the ION in.

After Honda I test drove a Hyundai Sonata. It was a nice enough car, but it just didn’t have enough of the special touches that the Camry and Accord had. I also tested out a Nissan Altima, but despite a lot of people liking it and a very high Consumer Reports score, I didn’t really care for it at all.

So lots of cars so far. Well, this past weekend we had to take our Tacoma in for an oil change. I decided that it was a good time for Laura to start test driving some vehicles too. I wanted her to give the Camry a shot and I wanted to get in a test drive of the Scion tC while we were there. Hopefully we were to move on to Honda on Saturday after the oil change and test out the Civic Hybrid, something Laura was keen on giving a shot.

So she drove the Camry and liked it, but not as much as I did. We decided that we really shouldn’t exclude the Prius, even though neither of us had ever really considered it. She thought it would be good to give it a chance since it was a very-high MPG hybrid. Drove it and was really impressed, actually. I hadn’t given a Prius much thought before but I really liked the features, the drive and the mileage it got per gallon.

Laura ended up getting a drive of the Prius as well and she liked it. After her drive we moved on to the Scion tC. Not at all impressed. Fun car for sure, but too low for how I like to sit and drive, and it felt too much like my ION. Fun enough, but not different enough.

So let’s skip ahead… In our parking lot here at work there is a Toyota Matrix parked with my stuff in it. Indeed, I drove it to work today. Left Findlay Toyota with it yesterday afternoon. That is an enormous number of different vehicles I’ve driven if you factor in the ION and Tacoma, for the last two weeks. So we bought a Matrix!

Well… No. We didn’t. Indeed folks, we bought a damn Prius!!! Yeah, I had no idea we’d love it as much as we do. I’d never considered one before because they were never incentivized before and had high prices. But Toyota came out with incentives on the Prius for the first time on May 5th. That, and I was able to negotiate some good stuff for it, so we got a pretty decent deal, I thought. They threw in a nice maintenance deal and gave me more for the ION than it was worth at auction. It didn’t hurt that we were repeat customers to the dealership.

They threw in $2000 off the price thanks to the incentive and we put another $1000 down. After it’s all said and done, we’re not going to be spending much more per month on the Prius over what we were on the ION, thanks to gas savings, etc.

So I have a Toyota Matrix right now because Findlay is correcting a few outstanding issues with the Prius, all visual stuff like paint scuffs and the like. Once it’s done, we’re all happy! I’ve already setup the insurance on it and we’ll be registering it this weekend, hopefully. Time to get my plates on it and have it be a done deal.

I’ll try to post photos of it soon.