Could I sound more excited?
I am pretty excited about it. I have been thinking about getting a new mini van for a couple of months, and had pretty much limited my selection to the Odyssey. It gets good gas mileage, has a good reputation for dependability and safety, and isn't as expensive as the Toyota Sienna.
Wednesday we had to take Kevin's Honda Fit to the dealer for a recall repair. We aren't loyal to Honda or anything. The Fit was the first Honda we owned and Kevin got that because he needed something that got good gas mileage when he started his new job which is almost an hour drive each way. While we were waiting for the Fit to be fixed, we test drove a 2010 loaded up Odyssey. It had 40K miles on it and was $32K. I liked it, but not the price and I didn't think we were out to buy a new van that night. I just wanted to see what the Odyssey was like since they had one there and my online research made me want an Odyssey.
After the test drive, Kevin talks numbers with the sales guy. I thought it was just guy talk, 'cause it's not like we were going to buy a new van this year, much less that night. But after realizing we could get a slightly less loaded up 2012 for less than the 2010 we just test drove, we decided we couldn't pass that deal up and the negotiations began. It seemed like hours of negotiations and I ended up telling my husband, I don't even want it anymore, I just want to go home. The kids were pretty good for sitting at a car dealership for nearly 2 hours but it was getting close to bed time and I just wanted to get out of there. Spencinator found some other bored kids playing their Nintendo DS's and he joined in on their fun, but Sweetie Pie was bored out of her mind and the Babes was wandering all over the place and not content to be held. So once we decided on a price and committed to buy, I took the kids and left Kevin to wrap up the deal with the sales guy.
We ended up getting a 2012 (not quite as loaded) Odyssey for less than the 2010 we test drove. You know how I like a bargain, well, Kevin is a bargain hunter too, and this deal was too good to pass up. We had to choose from what they had on the lot to get the deal, but they had 6 vans to choose from. Kevin and I didn't agree on color but I won out since I'm the one driving the car. I chose a dirt color which Honda eloquently names: Smoky Topaz Metallic. It has
I just love my new mini van. It is replacing our 2002 Mercury Villager mini van which my mom nick named the hooptie-mobile. In case you don't know what a hooptie is, you can get the official definition HERE. My old van doesn't meet all those requirements, but it does have paint peeling off the hood, idles rough, you have to give it some gas to start it, and the battery keeps dying.
The Odyssesy feels so much larger than the Villager, just look at all this leg room:
The Odyssey has a 60/40 split for the 3rd row. Here we folded down the 60 part and took out one of the middle seats for all kinds of room. We knew we'd need it for the shopping trip we had planned (more on that later).
Oh, and the Spencinator loves it because there is a power outlet to charge his Nintendo DSi.
Anyone else get a new car? Or buy a car when they didn't plan too. This isn't the first time we didn't set out to buy a car. A few years back we went grocery shopping and came home in a new to us (used) Jeep Cherokee. Funny how that happens.
