New Hogs in the Pigpen

    

As Louise Jefferson once said, "we're movin' on up!"   OK, it wasn't Louise.  It was the Jefferson's theme song, but you get the drift...

As of July 25, we will be new owners of a 2005 Winnebago "Minnie" motorhome.  Minnie is lightly used, with only 7500 miles on the odometer.  She replaces our fifth wheel Jay, which has served us well over the past two seasons, and is bound to find a new family who will get have much fun as we did, and hopefully, be able to make more use out of her than we have been able to do over the past six months.  There are more photos of Minnie in the Gallery section of the website (right hand side of the page...).

As part of the deal, the Beast is going along with Jay.  I'm not sure if they'll be sold as a package, or if Beast is destined to land in a used car lot somewhere in Nogales.  It's been a good truck, but with the cost of the motorhome, I couldn't justify a $500 payment for the truck when we no longer needed a tow vehicle that large.  So, it's for the best, economically and environmentally... 

The search for Beast's replacement was not without issue....  To keep our monthly budget reasonably close, I was looking for a used vehicle that could also do some off-roading and be towed behind Minnie.  That limited my choices somewhat, so I set out to search the various used car lots around Tucson, and there are a couple hundred... We only looked at a dozen or so. 

Late in the day Saturday, we stumbled upon a Kia Sorento which was in mint condition.  One owner, garage kept, and low mileage.  Price was decent as well, and it came with a 100,000 mile warranty and free oil changes for three years.  After a few disagreements between The Queen and I over the fact that it was 2WD, we signed a contract, contingent upon being able to confirm that it could be flat towed. 

After we agreed to sign the paperwork, we wound up with the finance guy at the dealership.  This is why I really hate car dealerships...

1. With the 3 year/100,000 mile warranty, we shouldn't need an extended warranty, right?  Wrong.  The 3/100K has a 50% deductable for both parts and labor...  So... it's worthless.  The extended warranty added $20 a month to the payment.
2. Gap insurance added another $20.  Gotta have it in Arizona.... 
3. The "free oil changes" showed up as a $350 line item on our contract.  We tell him to take it out, so he prints up our second set of paperwork for signature...
4. The interest rate we'd agreed to with the salesman somehow jumped from 7.25% to 9% when the finance guy wrote up the contract.  Whoops!  Let's fix that as well....

By the time we left the dealership, I'd never felt worse about a purchase in my life.  And we hadn't even picked up the car yet!

When we got home, I started doing a little research.  Within five minutes, I'd found a technical bulletin on Kia's "owners only" section of their website which clearly stated that the Sorento (aside from one particular model year with a manual transmission) could not be flat towed.  The funny part is that when we mentioned that to the sales manager on Monday morning (even after the service manaer confirmed that it would void the warranty), he tried to convince us that all we had to do was make a tranny modification and there'd be no problem.  Well, less of a chance of a problem.  And yes, it would probably still void the warranty.

I was actually somewhat relieved.  I had a legal out provided by the manufacturer, and despite desperate attempts by the dealership manager to ignore the tech bulletin, we didn't have to buy the Sorento, and I could go back to finding a true 4x4.

After driving around all morning on Sunday, we hadn't found anything remotely close to what I wanted, so we headed home around 2pm.  I decided to surf Cars.Com, and within a few minutes, found another used car lot which appeared to have exactly what I was looking for, so off we went again. 

Jackpot.  It met my needs, and was priced attractive enough to make the budget work.  I returned on Monday at lunch to test drive it, and a little later that night, had an agreement to buy it.

(drum roll).....

So.... replacing Beast is Green Two, a 2000 Jeep Cherokee "Classic" (or a XJ as real Jeep geeks refer to it).  Green comes to us from California by the way of Utah (gotta love CarFax), where he somehow grew longer shock abosorbers and larger tires than a stock XJ...   

Those who have known me for a long time will note that Green Two bears a striking resemblence to original Green, a '93 Cherokee.  I sold Original back in 2001 when we bought Liberty (which begat Durango which begat Beast).

Green Two is the same body style and color, but that's where the comparison ends.  Green One was a 4 cyl. 2WD manual everything (including transmission).  Green Two is a straight 6 4WD with auto everything (including transmission).  Seats and trim are pretty close to the same (some differences but grey is grey).  So he'll be a much better daily driver than Green One was, plus the off-road outfitting means that we're bound to have a few good days out in the desert away from pavement. 

At the very least, Jesse will have a cool truck to drive to school when we get to that stage in life... which gets closer each and every day.