New Car

This is my new car. After four years of driving cars that I couldn't stand, I've got one that I love again. About four years ago when my lease on my Chevy Impala was up, I went car shopping and bought a car that I hated for three years. It was a dumb decision in a lot of ways:

1. I bought a two door car. Try fitting three kids and three car seats in a two door car. I also found out the hard way that Nate got car sick in the small back seat easily. Nothing like vomit to kill the new car smell off right away.
2. The car was gray. That's not really a color, is it?
   
3. It was a 3 year lease. After hating the car at day 2, I was stuck with it for a long time. Not to mention that leases (or Fleeces, as Dave Ramsey calls them) are a sucker move financially.
   
4. I didn't include Cathie in the decision. She was gracious and after talking about it on day one, never rubbed it in. My kids on the other hand would tell me daily how they hated my car.
   

As penance more than anything, when my lease was up, I got Cathie a new car and drove our other mini-van around until now. The van was slowly dying, but it was paid off. The power steer was leaking like a sieve, but it worked for the most part. I was able to deal with it because it at least had a nice stereo, and somewhere along the way driving was instilling some spec of humility in me.

So a few weeks ago, I looked at the budget and figured we were at a point where we could make the move and I'd buy the car. Who's the first guy I call? Bob. Bob Rays is what Malcolm Gladwell calls a Connector:

What makes someone a Connector? The first--and most obvious--criterion is that Connectors know lots of people. They are the kinds of people who know everyone. All of us know someone like this. But I don't think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the importance of these kinds of people. I'm not even sure that most of us really believe that the kind of person who knows everyone really knows everyone. But they do.

Bob knows everyone and has a guy for everything. Everything. He has a slurpee machine guy, a video game repair guy and I'm sure he's got a left handed unicyclist guy somewhere in his Rolodex. On top of all that, Bob is a sexican - half Mexican, half Syrian. Bob loves to negotiate. Everything is negotiable. Brad tells this great story of one time when they were on vacation and they went out to get firewood. They found this little old lady selling it on her front lawn for a couple dollars a bundle. Much to Brad's embarrassment, Bob proceeded to negotiate with her, trying to get the best deal, cutting her prices in half, as Brad tried to disappear. We refer to the art of the deal as "Bobbing" someone down on price.

So I called Bob and he had a guy to hook me up with the car. He called his friend Dave at Livonia Chrysler, whose team took great care of me. You'll hear people say that all the time, and then give you the same deal they give everyone else. Not so here. Being a friend of Dave's got me treated like royalty at the dealership and everyone went out of their way to help me out with every aspect of the deal.

Anyways, I've got the car. I'm sure it will make me happy forever. Just like "stuff" always does for me.