thanks; they seem to be popular rental cars. In a "I wouldn't want to own one, but it's nice to visit" kind of way

I dated a guy that had a bra on his car. Huge pain in the ass to remove to lift the hood - and the bra itself caused paint wear in the spots where it rubbed.

Turns out he was actually gay too.



The Mazda and Kia wagons look like minivans to me, without the sliding doors, which is the best feature of minivans to begin with.

the Mazda 5 has the sliding doors though I think. I didn't think about the lifting the hood thing.

Went to the Toyota/Scion place today. Took a look at the Scion Xb. I was disappointed--I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. The dash is laid out weird, and the driving position seems uncomfortable. I also looked at the Toyota Rav4, which is, and has been a pretty nice car.

can you put "too much down" on a car? One of the articles I read listed this as a car buying mistake. How could that be a bad move?

perhaps I'm misinterpreting what this means?

If you are getting zero percent financing, I would put as little down as possible. But if you pay any interest at all, money you put down is reducing what you will pay in interest over the lifetime of the loan. The higher the interest rate, the more you would probably want to put down because you would be saving more.

well, that's what I thought. And I won't be getting any 0% financing, either. They say only 20% of buyers qualify for that kind of deal.

also, most lenders will only lend a certain amount versus the actual value of a car. Capital One, for example won't go over 120% of the invoice or NADA trade value including everything. tax tags, warranties, gap, everything.

Putting minimal cash down limits the dealer's ability to really crack you over the head.

conversely, they set rates based on equity position.....so you could get rates as low as 2.69% for 48 on < 70% LTV (loan to value) ratio deals. There are a lot of factors that go into whether or not putting big money down makes sense.....not the least of which is the availability of said cash....

okay, I'm not sure I understood all that. I'm hoping to put at least 50% down. You see any problem with that?

not as long as you negotiate price separately from payment, and get a payment calculator app for your iphone to check the payments the salesman is giving you. It is a common practice to put 'air' in a payment to make the bump in finance easier. negotiate only price and rate/term. figure the payments out yourself. dinkytown.net is a good resource. get a good warranty, and negotiate that too.

Already got the loan calculator app! getting all my ducks in a row. Told you it was going to take me some time, though.

Cloud, just buy the car from lumberjim - then you won't have to worry about the details.

long ride home....

road trip! (laf!)

Buy it from Jim and I will drive it over for the gas. It'll be about $250. Jim's dealership will pay the one-way ticket back from ABQ, which will be similar, so it's even-steven.