+Car, -Car

Cinnamon and I have developed a trend in major purchases: We tend to research the hell out of the deal -- reading tons of articles searching for the best deal, working out the math ahead of time and all that -- and then excute the deal in a very spur-of-the-moment fashion, as if it were an impulse buy. We did it with our condo, we did it a couple months ago with our new couch, and we did it this weekend with a car.

Yep, we bought a car.

I've been wanting to get out from under my little black Golf for awhile -- it's been rather maintenance prone, and ever since it topped 100,000 miles I've been worried about its longevity. In the beginning, I was looking at either a Mini (because I could park it in all those spaces in my neighborhood that're about a foot too short for any other car) or a Honda Civic Hybrid (for the incredible gas mileage). I test-drove the Mini, and boy was it nice, but the gas mileage was just average, and considering how much driving I do, I needed above average at least. The Civic Hybrid was nice, got great gas mileage and everything. But it was kinda hum-drum looking.

Enter the new Toyota Prius. One of my coworker has one and loves it, so I was conemplating it but didn't like its looks that much. The 2004 model, however, is redesigned and made more powerful while improving gas mileage. We hadn't been able to test-drive one, though, so on Saturday Cin and I headed up to Evanston Toyota to see if we could try it out. They had one on the floor, but it was already sold so we couldn't drive it (sure enough, it was no longer there when we drove past this morning) and the salesman said there's a two month wait for delivery. So we checked out how much it'd cost, worked out a financing estimate and called the insurance company, and put a deposit down. We're getting a blue one. And we'll test drive the next one that comes into the store.

Here's the trick: I wasn't anticipating a two-month wait, so there was a listing in Sunday's Tribune for the little black Golf. So I spent the day cleaning the car, arranged to borrow my parents' minivan in case I sold it, and waited for the phone to ring. And sell it I did, to the first guy who came by. Cash in hand. So my mom drove down and had dinner with us, and I drove out and picked up the van. And now I've got a down payment.

It's probably a little too soon, having not even seen the new car, but what should we name it?