I know I said I wanted a red Honda Fit, but reason and the pocketbook prevailed. A new Fit is around $20K with tax, so even a 6-year loan at 3.09% would have meant a $300 car payment every month for 72 months. There aren’t very many used ones available here, and the ones that are are only about $2K cheaper than brand new ones.

So we bought a sports car instead.

From Events

It’s a 2005 Mini Cooper S, with more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at. Cruise control! Retractable electric sunroof! Headlight Washers (headlight washers? Really?)! Radio controls on the steering wheel! Power windows and outside mirrors! Keyless locking and unlocking!

All of that for less than one-third the price of a new Fit. The way I drive cars, it might easily last another ten years. The 1997 Geo it replaces has 61,000 miles on it. When I bought it from Budget Rent-a-Car Sales in 1998 it had 14,000, so in the subsequent 14 years I put on another 47,000 miles. It’s hard to put a lot of miles on a car in Hawai’i.

We test-drove it and we learned that Mom can get into it as easily as she could the Geo, and the wheelchair will fit in the back with little trouble (I couldn’t close the trunk lid of the Geo with the chair in it; I had to use bungee cords to secure it). If we buy a transport chair, which we plan to do, it should go into the back even more simply.

It just made more sense to buy this car. If only it were bright red!