I’m considering life changes that might spur me to, at the age of 33, to eventually purchase an automobile.
That’s not such a huge deal in other countries, I think, but an American in her thirties who doesn’t own a car and doesn’t live in a major metropolitan district is considered quite weird. One who doesn’t own a car but does own a house is REALLY strange (like, insurance companies cannot wrap their mind around it and keep trying to sell me auto insurance strange, and ‘bank can’t understand why you don’t use car payment history to apply for mortgage even when you explained it three times’ strange).
I decided, when I got out of school, to just see how long I could do it. The fact is, living in the same city as my boyfriend and my folks and having when-needed access to their vehicles, with a good transit system, I could do it indefinitely. But certain factors are starting to make engine-powered-wheels appealing.
And I have no idea how one deals with that.
They are different sizes. They go vroom. Some of them you can see out of nicely and some of them you can’t. Their engines run on internal combustion and when driving I am always slightly concerned that it might accidentally become external combustion. Apparently people who try to sell them to you are assholes.
There are plenty of people in the US who first do this at eighteen, and I’m like *pokes cautiously with stick* “ew. Maybe later. When I’m older.”
So I poked into craigslist to test waters of ‘how do car’ and selected ‘private seller only’ because graphics created by autodealers make me want to claw my eyes out, and I learned something!
I learned I could buy myself a FIRE TRUCK for only 8500 bucks!
WHEEEEOOOWHEEEEOOOOWHEEEOOOO
There’s actually someone around here who has a decommissioned German firetruck and just drives it around as their car.
If you can stomach the cost and can find one that’ll do the range you need, I’d recommend an EV. The maintenance is way lower, they’re super nice to drive, and also don’t destroy the planet. Also, many of them you can set to preheat which might be an enormous benefit in winter…
