When I received my inheritance back in September 2017, I promised that I would buy my wife a new (to her) car to replace her 2006 Saturn Vue, which is not in the best condition (woman driver n’all, that’s a joke BTW, maybe…) and frankly, it’s not worth getting it fixed as it’s value is so low and it has some design flaws which causes unbearable wind noise at highway speeds and the window leaks in heavy rain.
I’ve been trying to get my wife to look online at cars with me for months, but she had shown little interest. My wife would say that because it was winter, she didn’t need a new car immediately. Her current car doesn’t have working A/C and it will cost $1,500 to fix, which as I wrote above is not worth the cost.
The car that I eventually bought for her, I had been looking at for a few weeks. On her way back from work, she stopped by the dealership where the car I was looking at is located and called me. So I told her to come pick me up as she had taken my car and I’d have a look at it in person. I was expecting her to arrive at our home in my car and we’d drive back, but no, she turns up in the car we’d been looking at.
I drove the Escape back to the dealership and I was fairly impressed, I couldn’t find anything really wrong, a few minor scratches on the bodywork, a missing retaining clip for the driver side visor (which cost’s $16 direct from Ford) and missing factory floor mats. It felt good to drive, sounded good, and it’s 4-wheel drive, so I was happy to purchase the car for my wife, especially as it’s 4WD, great for winter driving.
The Escape is almost as loaded as my Fusion of the same model year, it’s only missing the powered passenger seat and blind spot monitoring. It has satellite navigation, Bluetooth, automatic dual-zone climate control, power sunroof and the all-important mood lighting that our daughter loves in my car.
We ended up paying $12,000, including taxes and fees, which is in line with the Kelly Blue Book value, we put down a $6,000 deposit and financed the remaining $6,000 over four years, with a small monthly payment. We could have bought it cash, but the dealership wasn’t interested in haggling, even with a potential cash purchase and we were unlikely to find another Limited model that is so well equipped.
We’ve had the Escape for a few days now and everything seems good, no issues, everything works as expected, including the brakes, which got tested about an hour after the purchase was complete, a dozy woman, decided to pull out as my wife was approaching the intersection, the brakes passed the test with flying colors. I would have been pissed if my wife got in a wreck the same day we had bought the car.