Jan 29/30 - red, white and blue

Focusing on the diesel X5, I narrowed it down to three vehicles in this area -- one red, one white and one blue.  Mileage on the three, in that order, is 37k, 77k and 45k.  The first two are 2010's and the third a 2011.  The red one is a private sale and I exchanged multiple emails with the owner.  The white one is at a Toyota dealer; the blue one at a Nissan dealer.  They're all priced under Kelley Blue Book dealer retail value; the red one marginally so.  The red one has one month more on factory warranty (time expired) and the blue one roughly 6 months or 5k miles. 

I also narrowed down the Miami-area search to three vehicles.  The ones in this area are priced competitively within a 500 mile radius except for the Miami area which has its own price competition running about 2k less.  Miami is obviously less convenient and brings more unknowns. 

On the 29th we had Bev, Bruce and Paco for dinner.  Paco isn't well socialized with other dogs, always nose-in-butt with Abby, so we put Abby-doggy and Sandy-doggy away rather than leave Paco on leash.  We knew that was going to happen so it wasn't a big deal.  Sandy prepared shrimp, which I did on the barbie, squash risotto and green beans.  She also prepared a flan.  We had a good time. 

Paco is an all white Havanese, very cute and just a bundle of fur ... no, they don't have fur, they have hair.

So ... Wednesday was done.  Thursday was time to do some serious car shopping. 

I talked to and/or emailed the three in the Orlando area and we set off.  We got to the Nissan dealer at noon to see the blue one, and they immediately took information on our X5 so that they could do a quote.  It's quite a different experience than the normal car shopping experience.  The internet price is the price, basically.  They've already gone as low as they can go.  We went for a short test drive with the salesman and he then prepared an offer for our X5, not the other way around. 

We told him that we had other cars to see and set off for the private sale, the red one, stopping at the BMW dealer along the way because we were early for our appointment.  The dealer had nothing to offer in our price range.

We'd eaten lunch at the Nissan dealer which had a little deli.  It's a huge place and obviously does a big business.

We got to the private sale at 3pm and the fellow just handed us the key and we drove around the neighborhood.  We then went inside and talked to him and his wife -- lovely people -- and I told him that we had a tough decision to make and we'd be in touch.  That red one had a couple of interesting features that the blue one didn't.  Neither had, of course, a trailer hitch.  I'm going to have to add that myself.  Neither had roof rails; I presumed that I could add those.

We went back to the Nissan dealer, at that point pushing the Toyota dealer's white one to the background.  I wanted to look at a couple more things, which I did, and then made the decision to go with that one -- dark blue.  It was the extra warranty that swayed me more than anything else.  Sandy also liked that color better than the red but didn't have a strong opinion either way.  Now if one of them had been manual ... that would have been an entirely different story !

So ... am I able to drive this away ?  The sales manager decided "yes", they'd take my personal check.  I did an online form and they then went to check that I was who I said I was and whoops ... that credit freeze that I'd put on all three reporting agencies appears to work.  They were blocked from access.  I was going to have to come back the next day.  Rats.

Then I remembered that perhaps Sheryl could help me, since she was at the house.  I called her and she dug into the papers that were on top of my desk, one of which had the PIN number for one of the agencies.  I went online and paid my $10 for a temporary un-freeze and they could then verify my identity.  I wasn't asking for credit but they did need to verify my identity. 

This dragged on.  There were more papers to sign than when we bought the house.  We were about finished with that and were informed that we needed proof of insurance to leave the lot ... Florida regulation.  It had to have the new VIN on it.  Ok, at that point -- we'd been there three hours -- I started to lose it.  I'd signed the other car over to them; we didn't own it any more.  How can we get home ?

The salesman got permission from his management to call my 24-hour claims number to verify that I did, indeed, have insurance (the paper isn't really proof since I could have cancelled it in the meantime).  He made me promise that I'd get it to him this a.m.  I will, honest.

We left, exhausted by the process.  Driving back in the dark, I eventually found the cruise control etc. but will have to spend some time in daylight exploring all the electronics.  Our trusty black 2004 X5 with over 280,000 miles is gone.  I'm sure that it will run for some time yet ... perhaps in Mexico ?  Who knows.

I'll call Fields in Daytona and make an appointment for the trailer hitch. 

Done.  Onward.  I'll have to find the diesel dealers now and checkout the diesel emission fluid situation.