Another Car Update

Several weeks ago I found a car for sale on autotrader. It is a 1993 Mazda 626 sedan with a power sunroof, power locks and windows, manual, and 177,000 miles. The lady who is selling was the original owner (fairly rare these days) and evidently she has taken care of it and has all maintenance records. The 626 we tested in KC really impressed us, but it didn't work out as you may recall. Since that time, I have done some more research on the 626 and found some interesting facts. The time period between 1993 and 1997 was when a very good transmission for the manual version was used. But the automatic version of the same car was awful. When I checked out the comsumer reports on the 626, it returned an average score, not that impressive really. But when I went deeper and looked at the consumer ratings I saw that the people who owned the manals gave the car a very high rating, usually 9.0 and above, while the automatics were given terrible ratings between 4.0 and 7.0 it seemed. Evidentally the main ratings don't distinguish between the two versions. Anyway, it seems this car is a very good car, just what we are looking for.

However there are two problems. The car is in San Diego and the asking price is $1000 higher than blue book. I don't doubt that the price is higher because the lady has it in such great shape, but I don't think it should be that much higher. About the location though, it really seems to be a problem. But Katie has relatives that live close to the seller. I believe they are going to check the car out for us. After that, we have several options; if they think the car is great we could fly out to San Diego to pick the car up. But that would addabout $800 to the already high price. We actually couldn't afford that. Or we could (on the recomendations of her relatives) buy the car without seeing it and have them drive it to the reunion in Colorado and pick it up there. Just from a human perspective this second option seems risky and unlikely to turn out well.

Again, I am not sure how this prospect will turn out, but I really like the car, more than any I've seen in the past 14 months. If God wants this car for us, He'll get it. We're just waiting on Him to move.