Cars, Trucks and Transmissions

I recently adopted a new philosophy on car buying: Buy them at around four years old and sell them at around eight. The idea being let someone else take the initial financial depreciation hit. That being the case, I guess my last new car purchase was in April of 2001. It was a 2001 BMW 325i with the sport package. A really sweet car indeed Problem was it used premium gas and synthetic oil. Both of which make for expensive maintenance costs. And that is not even considering the cost of the performance tires for the rims included in the sport package!

So, last week I sold my Bimmer

This means I needed to find a new car (well new to me, so new used car). I have long maintained a list of three simple requirements for my cars:

1. Have a manual transmission.
2. Be black.
3. Have a sunroof/moonroof.

And my last three cars met all these requirements. Of course two of the last three were new so it was easy to just order them that way. This time I was going for used plus economy. Thus I figured the VW TDI cars would be a good choice as the diesel run on a cheaper fuel and have great gas mileage. So I started my quest for a VW Golf TDI with a manual transmission, sunroof and black. I found nothing in the entire country. So, I started backing off of my requirements one by one. Finally I found a few all with high miles. Then when I dropped the manual transmission requirement I found one local VW Golf TDI. However, the owner is asking an insane price for it. So I gave up on finding a Golf. Next choice, a small truck. A Toyota Tacoma. I have had many Toyotas and been around a couple of Toyota trucks. They last forever. Well in a small truck I can rid myself of the third requirement. I just do not need a sunroof in a truck. Well there are a bazillion options and configurations of Tacomas. I really did not want a 4×4 as I generally do not need one and I do not want the extra maintenance cost and higher gas mileage. BUT the 4×2 Tacomas sit really low to the ground and well just are not what I wanted. BUT the Tacoma PreRunners are 4×2 and sit high above the ground. The downside of the PreRunner only comes with an automatic transmission. Ugh!!! Well I found a PreRunner that looked good. Of course it was an automatic… Well I test drove it. Nice acceleration, nice handling. I bought it. And it is grey, not black. So I bought a truck that meets exactly zero of my big three requirements!

Funny thing is I really like it