Here is the story. We had 2 cars, Sherri's is a 2001 Kia and mine is a 2000 Saturn. We have had almost no problems with Sherri's car, but mine has seemed to be one thing after another. Normally not anything HUGE, but still a pain. A week and a half ago we were in my car (saturn) driving down the road and it felt like the engine lost power, you put your foot on the gas and it crept forward but had little acceleration and it died at stoplights. We knew that something was seriously wrong so we took it to our mechanic. They looked at it and told us that it was something with the engine and that it was big enough that we would probably be better off taking it to the saturn dealer, so we did. They had it for about a week trying to figure out what exactly was wrong.
Meanwhile Sherri and I decided to start looking around at cars, our idea was that we would get mine fixed, sell it and use that money to get something new since my car kept having issues. We found a car that we REALLY liked and was in the price range that we wanted and so we test drove it and got the ball rolling, but we were still waiting to hear a final word on the cost to fix my car. Well, this morning we got the call...the car needs about $7,000 in repairs!!! Let me remind you that this is a 2000 Saturn and it is only worth about $4000, at best. Apparently something happened in the engine and that triggered a few things, basically, it needs a new engine and a few other things. Blah.
SO, obviously our plan changed, since the car needs so much work we have to scrap it, we may get 500 for it if we are lucky. BUT..in a lot of ways this is a very good thing. The money that we were going to use to fix my car we just used as a down payment for our new car, and we don't have to worry about selling my old car.
What is this car you ask? It is a Mercedes ML320. It is the Mercedes Sport SUV. The car has only had 1 owner and he was a professor at UAA (local university) and it was maintained amazingly! The car practically looks brand new! It has low miles on it and it has only been serviced at the Mercedes dealership. We got it for about 4,000 below what it is worth and with what we put down we have very easy payments.
Needless to say..WE LOVE IT! It will be SO much better to have in the winter, it will be much nicer for me to take work clients around in and when we do decide to sell it the resale on these in Alaska is pretty good. The gas mileage is just a little below what my Saturn got, so that is nice as well.
Here are some pictures!!
