A Kia?

Driving home on Good Friday evening after work, I was armed with Kelly Blue Book car value printouts, and a pre-approval from Ford Motor Credit. Driving my vintage BMW has been reminding me of what happens when the Space Shuttle hits the earth's atmosphere, and it just sort of starts falling apart - with the heat tiles saving the coccoon from burning, and protecting the astronauts. The core of the Bimmer is solid, but everything else is sort of falling apart.

Then, a typical thing happened for me. I had a change of heart, and decided I didn't want to pay sales tax, much lesss the true cost of buying any new car. I was sort of on the fence when "ring ring"....it was the sales guy I had been working with. He wanted to schedule an appointment with me. I declined and told him I'd call if I were coming in on Saturday. Between Friday night and Saturday afternoon I received five calls from him and his boss. That was five too many. In some respects I feel bad for the sales guy - I know the pressure is on high right now to move cars.

So, here's my used poor man's Mazdaspeed 3 - it's called a Kia Spectra5. Yup, a Kia. I never thought I'd own one either. A red one no less. The last Kia I drove - from Minneapolis to Wisconsin - survived 140 highway miles in 4th gear @ 5000 rpm (since I didn't see the overdrive button, and I had the windows down because there was no A/C, so I couldn't hear the enging screaming). So you gotta figure they are making some tough cars. I hope.