I am obsessed with the Sync system and the touchscreen interface in the Explorer. It has so many features that I love, like Bluetooth, Sirius radio, Navigation, you name it. I feel so fancy and spoiled in this car. And even though it's a lease, we are not in danger of going over miles at all, even with a trip to NJ and back (about 1,200 miles), so that's nice. The main issue we have is that the car gets TERRIBLE gas mileage, but there's not much we can do about that. It does take E85 gas, which can be up a $1 cheaper than regular gas, so that helps. Here's a photo of Nash in the back of the Explorer for our trip to NJ. I'm just glad we have a car that is big enough to bring everything we need and the dog and Eli :)
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| Nash, not so sure about his downgrade from business to coach class for our road trips! |
Stats:
2006 Nissan Altima
80,000 miles
Charcoal grey
Previous lease that the owner (an early-20s kid) had bought after his lease term
The Good:
Because the car was a lease, it had been regularly maintained for the first 3 years (oil changes and the like were free).
The owner was selling it for less than he owed because he was leaving the country for a year
The interior was in excellent condition
Engine in good working order
New brake pads*
The Bad:
4 different tires (this isn't in itself a bad thing, but it says something about the owner; ie. he didn't replace all the tires at once and probably cut corners on other things too)
Some scratches and dents on the exterior - none major
Needed a new batter (we found this out after we bought it, actually)
We managed to negotiate the owner down about $750 under his asking price and bought the car on August 1. Because of a series of unfortunate circumstances mostly the fault of the seller, we did not actually receive the title and license for the car until September 7, but that's all well behind us.
*So regarding the brakes...it turns out that while the brake pads were new, the previous owner had definitely bought the cheapest brakes and gotten them installed at the cheapest possible place because what we thought was just incidental squeaking in the front brakes because the car hadn't been driven for a while actually turned out to be incessantly, infuriatingly squeaky brakes that are the reason that this post is delayed since August. For the first 3.5 months of our car ownership, the brakes squeaked every time I hit them and made a grinding noise every time we slowed down. Because we were so busy, we never really had time to get them checked out or fixed until Thanksgiving. This is when my dad informed me that new brake pads were almost certainly the answer to all of life's (ok, our car's) problems. He also informed me that one can buy $35 brake pads and install them yourself (ok, not everyone can do this, but with the help of David Lucyk, I can). So, the day before Thanksgiving, I stopped at O'Reilly Auto Parts and purchased some mid-grade ceramic brake pads and that afternoon we had some father-daughter bonding time where Dad taught me to change the pads.
Then, I got in the car for a little spin around the block and............
ahhhhhh...silence, for the first time.
Which is why I can only now (ok, 2 weeks ago, I'm late with this post) say that I have purchased a car that I love.
And as a result of that love, I spent some time the day after Thanksgiving giving my car a little TLC, including a cleaning inside and out, so that it was ready for this photo shoot :)
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