The “auburgino” legend is drawing to a rapid close as her replacement has been selected and a deposit has been paid. We don’t like changing cars as we both become quite fond of them, possibly because we hang on to them for so long!This weekend has been spent trawling the car yards of Chengde road after I had an eventful experience south of Wugu at the “big daddy” strip of second hand car dealerships on Thursday afternoon/evening. Cassy and I had come to the sad realization that the “aubergino” was definitely on its last legs if not quite giving a death rattle, we could feel it coming> rather than be stranded on a mountain road or in the east coast tunnel when our vehicle abruptly failed to proceed, we decided to look for a replacement. We had the idea that we would do some research, take our time and select a car at our leisure. As is the nature of these things, it didn’t quite go to plan and our timetable sped up quite rapidly when we realized we could get what we wanted sooner than we thought.
I’d found a very popular website used by the second car buyer in Taiwan, and even though all in Chinese, it wasn’t hard to work out the various tabs at the top and narrow down our search according to area, engine size, make and model and most importantly, price. We’d decided to spend up a bit this time, partly as it’s a perfect time with the Aussie dollar going gangbusters: our money is better spent here at the moment. We thought about ten thousand Aussie should secure something reasonably new of a reasonable quality, and we were right. There were lots of choices and we looked at hundreds! The website was great as it gave us an island wide idea of price; so that when we went looking we were fairly knowledgeable.
Taiwan’s fickle weather attacked us on Saturday! We were sweltering in a beating sun and the search on the hot, dry, dirty Chengde road was not a pleasant experience. We did meet some nice salesmen and women, we also met a few snarly uncooperative ones, but we didn’t mind: we just didn’t linger at their yard. My Chinese was tested out on numbers and prices and technical car stuff, but using a combination of Chinese, English and “Chinglish”, we managed to get our message across. We left after a considerable number of hours, determined to get back and test the board out in a few the next day.
The board test is a little weird, but important to us. We didn’t really want a van or people mover etc and we also didn’t want to strap boards to roof racks if we could avoid it. We wanted a saloon with fold down rear seats able to take a 6’5” surfboard in the back….not so easy to find! If we had to, we would have looked at different models, but as it turned out, we found just what we wanted, albeit a lot older and cheaper than we first looked for. We settled on A Honda Accord, vintage 1999 which is very impressive and for under half what we were initially looking at. Sure, it’s a little older, but it is in great condition and is beautifully finished. Just some of the specs: 2 airbags, ABS brakes, air con, electric everything, including sunroof, full leather upholstery all round with wood grain trim, CD stacker, alarm etc. It has a 2 litre VTEC engine and the body was clean and blemish free. We’re pretty happy!
I did the deal today and paid a deposit and spent a few hours running back and forth to banks etc, taking test drives, basically just checking out all the little things and whether they all worked. I now need to go back tomorrow afternoon to trade in the big old corona for a few bucks, take it off the buy price, then get all the rego transferred over at the Motor Transport department. I’m expecting a few hours for that and then: “new” car! We cleaned out the old car this afternoon, and the portable shower, tub of surf equipment, maps and various other stuff is all ready to go in the new car.
On a different note, I’ve been peer pressured into entering “Movember” for charity this month. Apart from the sparse growth I’ll be able to achieve, the fiery red numbers amongst all the grey with a just a few aberrant black hairs will be a real horror show. I don’t know if I’m going to last real long! Cass is exhausted after her parent conferences on Thursday and Friday and our car hunt all weekend…we both need another weekend to relax a little. Photos: a collapsed lion dancer at the temple just around the corner, me and Virg with a stack of cash, the last shot of the beat up old Auburgino and the new Accord.