Drove Home an Acura TSX Tonight

I bought a 2008 Scion tC in July of 2007 a month after I started at Liberty.  I had graduated college and wanted to “treat” myself so to speak.  I had to buy brand new and I had to have the brand spanking newest model because they added so much cool new stuff to it.  I got my 2 door tC and loved it.  It was fast, it was fun, it had iPod integration, it was a standard, I really enjoyed it… until I sat in an Acura TSX.  A luxury car.  It was fast as well, but it was refined.  It had technology.  Leather.  A six speed.  I got hooked on it for a little while about a year and a half ago, but that phase passed.

Fast forward to the present day.  Sally and I are pregnant, with twins.  Transferring two kids in two car seats in and out of a two door car is going to be difficult, painful, and nearly impossible on a regular basis.  If my friends have to thrust themselves to get out of my slightly titlted back seat we’ll have to basically throw our children to get them out and that just won’t work.  So after some discussion, we decided that I should trade my car in for a four door model.  It didn’t matter what car I got as long as it met the following requirements:

1. It had four (4) doors
2. It cost less than my current car

I thought this would be a fun little challenge and started doing research.  I figured that I’d need to get a car that was the same year as my car or older in order to save a bit of money (maybe with higher mileage as well).  I also thought that maybe I could use this as a chance to upgrade.  Maybe I have to get a car that is two years older than mine but I can get it with leather.  I made a list of cars that interested me.  They were mostly foreign because the Americans don’t have anything that would cut it for me from before 2009.  My list included: the Mazda 3, the Honda Civic, the Nissan Sentra, the Honda Accord, the Mazda 6, the Nissan Altima, and maybe the Chevy Malibu.

I had two car classes in mind: compact (3, Civic, Sentra), and midsize (Accord, 6, etc).  I wasn’t sure which class I wanted so I planned to test drive both types.  Oh, and I had one more on my list: the luxury compact Acura TSX.  Coincidentally, the previous generation TSX had come down in price close enough to be a possibility.  Since the TSX basically had everything that I wanted, I decided to look at it first.

I took a trip after work today to the Acura dealership in Hampton and met a salesman who was very nice.  They had two models for me to look at: a 2008 with a 6 speed transmission and a 2007 with an automatic.  The salesman let me drive both with no pressure.  He obviously could tell that I was interested and was happy when I agreed to “run the numbers” to see what they could offer me.  After a bit of haggling, I’m proud to say that I drove home a 2008 Acura TSX tonight.

But I didn’t buy it:) I just brought it home to test drive for the night.  It is very nice and I do really like it, but after speaking with my financial analyst I’ve decided that we have to do a bit more bargaining before it can become a reality.  These purchasing decisions tend to go faster than I expect them to: I planned to test drive a bunch of cars at several dealers and ended up driving two cars at one dealer (and they were both the same model).  But I’m happy with the feature set, ride, and handing of the TSX so I’m comfortable sticking with it.  Not sure if it will be the one that is in my garage tonight, but I think an Acura TSX is in my future.