Shopping for a new car

As Giddy Tigers so cleverly spotted, I drive a Toyota Vios. It’s a few months old now and I’m happy to say that I’m very glad I bought it instead of the Honda City that I was comparing it to. I feel it handles better. I was driving a 15 year old Honda Civic belonging to my dad before this. Its in excellent condition but the car had to go to someone else hehe… Anyway, I thought long and hard before committing to a new car, simply because of the price. Over here, the amount of money spent on a car, especially a better car, can be nearly equivalent to that of a small house. Its obscene.

And that’s not considering the car loans and the monthly installment payments. I managed to get a pretty decent interest rate on my loan after some wrangling. Getting the loan was not a problem, because Toyota has some tie up with the bank. The problem was in them approving the “special rate” loan for a lower loan sum. I don’t like taking loans and paying interest, which is why its taken me so long to own a new car. I wanted to save as much as I could for the downpayment. But the banks don’t like that. Dang! Anyway, the loan is for 5 years and it pains me to know that by the time the loan is paid up and the car is actually “mine”, it might then be time to consider a new car!

So my considerations when buying a new car is the make, price and loan interest rate, in that order. I had to go for the cheapest model in the make I wanted and sacrificed about 0.1% on the interest rate compared to Honda, but I think I’m happier with it. I know someone who bought the City about the same time as I did, so there’s cause for comparison there.

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