Actually, I agree that an older, high mileage car is the best first car for someone. Both of the times I brought girlfriends from "afraid of driving" to "better than average driver", it involved getting them an old car that they could learn on without shedding any tears if it were totaled. I'd be a little concerned about rollovers with the 4Runner except that Andrew sounds sensible enough not to drive it that hard.

I'm curious - given you bought the S2000 as a daily driver, why did you not end up using it that way?

 

No, no. Andrew will have his license in April so I want to make the 4Runner (1998 with 108,500 miles) available to him. So I'm going to take over Liz's TL as my daily driver and she is going to use the TSX.

She hasn't test driven it yet, so we're not absolutely sure but her other choice is a 4 door Civic EX, which is also an excellent car but not quite the same. I'm pretty sure she'll opt for the TSX. Carm, as we get closer I'll talk to you about it.

 

I was going to put the 4Runner on the market, but I still owned it. My wife suggested that we keep it for the winter and for it's utility. At the same time, I started to fall in love with my S. Within a few weeks of taking it home it became much more than a car. It wasn't meant to happen this way, but it did.

We ended up keeping th 4Runner to teach Andrew to drive and to give to him, and it continued to be my daily driver.

 

Rob,

Go to the Acura web site. They have an excellent interactive presentation on the TSX. It's broken up into exterior and interior components. Takes about 30 minutes to view the whole thing. It is very well done. Very informative. Much better than sitting thru a sales pitch.

 

I'm going to do that with Liz later this week.

I happened to be in an Acura showroom two weeks ago, waiting for a colleague bringing his car in for service. I took a good look at the TSX. It is quite a car. I was very impressed.

 

Rob, you seemed to answer everything except what you are going to do with the S. Did I miss something? Sounds like you will buy it and keep it, but I don't see you actually say that. Time to answer the question.

 

I would expect a CPA to be that perceptive. I purposely didn't answer yet. I will answer it this evening. I was just waiting one more day to see if anybody else had any opinions.

 

You're in love with your S - I expect you'll keep it. You'll bargain with the dealership some on the payoff and then buy it.....at least, that's what I'd do.

 

I vote to keep it. I'm in the same boat but I have two more years on my lease. It will have about 20k on it when the lease is up and the salesmen have already told me when I leased it to let them know when I turned it in becausde they'd be buying a new car knowing how I'd drive it. So, I've decided to buy it from the finance company when the lease is over. My residual is 19k but I'd like to understand more about what Derf was talking about when I go in to negotiate.

I am curious about the few mods you've made. I thought we had to turn it in in the same condition we bought it as far as mods go. That leads me to think you'll keep it. I'll be waiting for your answer tomorrow and hope you give a detailed explanation as to your decision.

And thanks (other) guys for giving me more to chew on that I hadn't even thought about yet. It only hurts when I think of the overall price I'll end up paying after about 7 years.

 

There is absolutely NO WAY Rob is giving up that car. I'm willing to take very large bets on it...