God Brought Me a Car

It was January when Steve at Japanese Auto Clinic delivered the news: my 1991 Toyota Camry was rusting out from underneath. As a physician talking with a terminal patient, Steve said I had a year, but he wouldn’t push it to two.

I started looking in May with a list of specifications: I wanted another Camry, with 100,000 or fewer miles. I wanted to pay cash, preferrably no more than $10,000. And Japanese Auto had to bless the vehicle. Beyond that, I felt uncertain and scared. I hadn’t bought a car since 1983. I had married in 1984, and my ex took care of all things car-related. We had acquired the 1991 Camry in 1998, and I’d been driving it since I moved to Virginia in 2004.

Friends told me I should go for a loan or lease or look at smaller cars or be prepared to spend half again as much. And I began to wonder if they were right. I started looking on Memorial Day weekend at a dealer who all but refused to have the mechanic look at the car I test-drove, saying their own shop had gone over the vehicle and that should be good enough. In June, two other dealers were happy to have me take cars in for a look-see. In each case, the cars were deemed to need $2,000 or more in immediate repairs. I took in a potential private-sale vehicle and learned the owner hadn’t disclosed a front-end accident. That damage had been repaired well, Steve said; however, the owner had driven the car hard, and I’d need to spend several thousand dollars to deal with related problems. After the first pre-sale inspection, Steve halved the price he was charging me. That’s typical of the service you find at Japanese Auto Clinic. That’s exactly why I trust them so much. All told, I think I had five Camrys inspected, and drove three or four more.

After a deluded woman wanted more than double the Kelley Blue Book price for her 2000 Camry, I decided to look at Honda Accords since Consumer Reportshttp://melanierigney.com/blog/memoir/god-brought-me-a-car/www.consumerreports.org, Steve, and my ex-husband all endorsed them. The first ad I answered, it turned out, was from a young man I knew slightly from church. He was selling his Accord because a baby’s on the way and he and his fiancee can do fine with a single car. I liked that they were planning for their son’s future. I liked that the car had fewer than 90,000 miles and that he had it priced within 10 percent of my budget. I really liked that Steve told me, “This car is clean! Buy it! It’s a great deal.” The whole deal was done within one week.

It was a little strange to clean out the Camry; I’m donating it to a charity. We’ve traveled a lot of miles and travails together in the past 15 years. But I’m excited about the adventures ahead with the Accord. I’ve named her Grace because to me it is clear that not only did Japanese Auto bless this vehicle, so did God.