What are we doing?? Searching for a vehicle to buy. When I say VEHICLE, I mean just that. It isn't necessarily a CAR type of vehicle. What else is there?? Well now...let me tell you the REST of this story.
Our first thought was to buy a less expensive vehicle that is multi-purpose. This little Kangoo is extremely popular here, both as a shopping basket for old people, merchants and tradespeople. We dont see many young people in there, put it that way, lol. This is a 1300cc engine which is just fine for travelling on often winding roads, and where speed is not a necessity. They are lowering the speed limit to 80kph in the near future, from 90kph. This is a good thing, in my opinion. In fact, the only place we do over 90 is on the highway where the speed limit is 110kph.
Along with the neat little van, which is very multi-purpose, we would require a trailer. These run around 1,000 euros for single axle, and 1200euros for dual axle.
This should be fine for everything we need. No, we havent purchased this one, but we now know where to get it! lol.
We have visited a number of car yards and Garagistes. The latter generally have cars that their mechanic's workshop is selling for clients. These are not cared for at all. They are often dirty both inside and out, flat tires, mold growing inside and out, and they smell bad. Some have had smoker owners, which the Garagiste refused to admit, lol. Our noses told us otherwise!
We have driven past the Peugeot dealership on a number of occasions on our return from the house and other environs, and today was our second visit, with the intention of making a purchase. Our previous visit at the beginning of the week saw us speaking Frenglish with the son of the yard owner, who is the salesperson there. His English is better than my French! He did really well conveying his information to us. I dont know that we did the same conveying our needs to him, but somehow we all got along well, and with much humor.
We drive a Renault rental car at the moment, and had gone to Angouleme to refresh our contract, yesterday. I dont like the poor turning radius on the vehicle we have, so I wasn't in a hurry to try another Renault, having judged them to be similar in this feature. How wrong I was. NEVER make that mistake! Each vehicle is different, obviously, and we had prejudged poorly.
We had thought to go for the top of the French car heap, the Peugeot. I wanted to make my old (deceased) Dad proud and drive one. He bought 13 of this breed in his lifetime and loved them.
It was not to be. We drove a 4008 Peugeot which is a larger car, wider, 2000cc and most things were electric. Nice, except that I found myself wrestling with it. It was hard work. Felt tighter and stiff by comparison.
We tried a Peugeot 2008 sports model. Hard suspension, zippy, clutch was very sllooooow, but the SERVICE light was on, and I didn't feel like going too far in it.
We drove the Renault Scenic XMOD, 2015 model. It is a cross-over. I did donuts in the parking lot, checked out the breaks on the road outside which fortunately was a dead end, and drive to the dead end to check out the turning radius further. Turns on a dime! Most important in these parts.
It is a 1500cc car, new tires, body in near perfect condition, one owner, slightly higher miles, but the price was dead on budget of 10 grand. Aaaannnnnd....She is WHITE! yay! Yes, too many dark cars on these dark roads, and we dont want to be one of France's high road toll statistics on secondary roads. At least they will see us coming.
The car sits higher than it's namesake without the XMOD. Easy to drive, which is the main thing. Anything I have to work too hard at, these days, will have to go out the window.
They are installing a tow bar for us, and we will get the new tires, new foot mats, and hopefully they can repair the small area of stitching on the drivers seat where it has come unstitched. The fella who owned it previously must have worn something abrasive in his back left pocket.
Voila! There she is.
So, all this is a bit weird, so far. No deposit required, they are installing the tow bar for us, and we will be summoned when all is serviced, detailed and installed. Sounds fine, but not signing anything first is the weird part. In the USA you wouldn't be let out of the show room without signing away your grandkids, mother and two years of salary!
It is a bit like the house, to be honest. We havent put any money down yet. They have to do all the testing, diagnostics etc and report back before we sign our lives away. This is taking the best part of a week, which is fine, and we expect to be 'summoned' to the Notairs office some time next week.
Next week it is all happening. We will hopefully get our bank account....if the papers from the USA arrive by courier. My banker told me they missed yesterday's courier, so I guess they went today?? We need them by Tuesday, and Monday is a public holiday in the USA.
Nothing like nail biting.
The rest of the nail biting took place tonight. For some reason we couldn't complete something online and I had to make all number of phone calls to the USA to get it straightened. I need it ALL to work perfectly for when we have to transfer money. We dont want to delay anything.
As with the boat and the house, we have come away with something we didn't expect to. How does that work? Call it an Open Mind! If we become to fixated on what we THINK we want, we fail to see the possibilities in anything else.
We often think we need something else when in fact, talking the process through together, we find that our needs are different. Waz and I dont argue, but we do have serious discussions of pro's and con's, and we manage to always meet in the middle. It isn't a matter of what he or she wants so much as how can we work together with what we have (usually dollars) and how can we make them go as far as possible, in any situation. Our goals are common and we are prepared to make do to a certain degree, if it means we will have money left over for something else. Today was one such example, with the other vehicles being 4-6 grand more expensive.
We have a whole full of double paned windows to fit before we do a lot else with our new home. This will be important for both summer and the following winter. We feel a little better about this huge expenditure, after making the decision on our vehicle, today.
Even though we might be paying a bit more for the vehicle, buying from a dealer, we will take the car back there for servicing and we feel sure we will be welcomed and will get the best possible service.
We are putting our money into our community as this is a Family Business, and we intend to keep doing that here.
Well, it is time for bed again, and tomorrow is Saturday. We didn't do the obligatory weekend supermarket shop today, so tomorrow morning we will have to move ourselves early, as the cupboard is getting bare. Funny how that happens.
We ate lunch on the outskirts of Angouleme today, at a chain we recognized...Pat A Pain. Nice place, and good food. We shared a Fougasse and had a slice of Tropezienne and a Café Crème.
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