Time to buy a car

Buying a car involves serious consideration. My husband spends hours researching costs, mileage, durability and resale value.
I don’t do that.
In fact I barely notice when he trades in vehicles. If it gets us from point A to point B safely, without any problems, I’m satisfied.
I had an opinion once, many moons ago when our family had grown too large for a sedan. I saw a great price on a red station wagon from one of hubby’s least favorite companies.
He bought it and drove it everywhere. We only had one car back then. Every time it needed a maintenance, he groused about the unreliability of that brand. I saw doom looming when I read that if a person does not like a car, the chances of having an accident increase significantly. About that time he validated the study, slid on a snowy road and walked away from a crunched up car. It still worked. It just looked awful. He chose a brand new car. Before we traded it in, the salesman said, “don’t fix the car, it will sell better that way.”
Sounded good to us, we had better ways to spend our time. The replacement was a factory fresh car from hubby’s favorite company.
He asked, “What color do you want?”
I said, “gray” with some other details. He came home with gray and not the other details.
The car lasted a dozen years. The primary driver liked that car. He replaced it with a van which also lasted a bunch of years.
The first time I bought a car by myself, I spent about 10 minutes looking across the street at a used car for sale. I walked in, wrote a check and drove it until my guy, who did not favor that particular brand, ran it into a deer. We will skip the couple of clunkers he bought for me to drive to replace it. I will note however that I never crashed them.
The next time I looked across the street and saw a car for sale, I walked over, wrote another check and drove that car for a decade. Recently that ancient car dragged us to the shop too often for repairs. All were fixable and far less than the price of another car or even a car payment. Then it overheated and could not hold its water anymore. Time to buy a car.
The guy who cares about cars began shopping. He asked me questions. He told me what we needed. Barely glanced up from my book, mumbled “Um-hum,” and rolled my eyes every time he said, “Let’s go car shopping.”
He went alone and came home with a couple of suggestions.
He insisted, “You have to test a drive a car before we buy it.”
“All right!,” I said, slammed my book shut and slumped out to go car shopping. It just wasn’t the same as looking across the street and seeing a car in my price range.
I did not like the car. Not wanting an accident, we decided to wait. One phone call ended the wait. “Come get me. The van just stopped,” my husband said.
The mechanic said, “It’ll take two weeks.”
We had one unreliable vehicle. Driving it one day, I looked across the street and saw two cars that looked interesting. I bought the first one I drove.
I wrote the check, tossed my coat in the backseat and drove away. Until his vehicle is fixed, hubby is driving the unreliable clunker, and I am driving the third car which took me 15 minutes to choose.