Accord

To be in agreement, to come into harmony. This is the definition of 'accord,' eponymous with the vehicle I spent today getting checked out.



I went and looked at it the other evening after work. I took it to the garage I'd called about doing some inspections, and it turned out they didn't actually have someone in the evening who could do them. The evening version of 'mechanic' turned out to be a kid who does the occasional oil change or tire mounting, not someone the owner trusts to check out a used car and give it the shop's stamp of approval or lack thereof.



So I went back today, armed with the name of another garage that said it'd be no problem to bring in a vehicle on Saturday.



No problem turned out to be they could look at it two hours after I got there. The prospective seller and his girlfriend dropped me in downtown Lawrence so I could kill time waiting. And while it's not like I didn't have other stuff I wanted to do, and an abbreviated weekend with my honyocks due to Mother's Day, downtown Lawrence is as good a place to kill time as you're likely to find.



I browsed in a real bookstore. Not a Borders or B&N, but an honest to goodness labyrinth of used books of every description with little nooks to sit down and peruse. If I'd had money, I would have picked up a few things, but just being in a proper bookstore was nice. There used to be a lot of them. The death of local, small, bookstores, especially used bookstores, is almost as damning a judgment against the advent of the internet as this blog.



And I shopped in a record store where there were actual records. For the most part, the same records that were there the last time I was in one, but believe it or not, this New York Dolls is a recent pressing.



I ate lunch at a Latin American place, which turned out to be more expensive than I'd anticipated. Good stuff, though. I had a chicken & goat cheese quesadilla, plaintain chips with some sort of black bean sauce (with hints of cream and citrus), and agua de watermelon. This last was a delicious drink, as far as I can tell what you'd get if you made lemonade out of watermelons. I could drink about ten quarts of it on a day like this, though this would be expensive.

Then I went and found an ATM because I realized I had no cash for the bus. Then I bought a newsletter off a bum for $1 so I'd have change for the bus. Then the bus turned out to be free. It's not always, just today.



The bus took me around a huge section of West Lawrence that looks exactly like every other sprawling suburb. I had the bus to myself most of the way, so the free 'T' wasn't really wowing anyone. Then it wouldn't drop me closer than a quarter mile from the garage even though it drove directly by it.



Wonder why mass transit doesn't seem to catch on in the Midwest...

Good news: the car checked out better than I expected. I paid for a flush & fill of the AC to make sure it was sound, and the guy put .3 lbs of freon in, but said if it had a leak, he'd have been able to tell after ten minutes on the vacuum. He wasn't guaranteeing anything, but about as solid an AC as I'm going to get in a ten year old car.



The alignment was tight, it was mechanically sound, including a compression check. 'The only thing with this car,' the mechanic said. 'The muffler's coming lose but you got awhile on that. And the tires are about shot.'

This latter I had already noticed myself.

'Could you tell it had been wrecked?' I asked. 'As in totaled?'

The guy was genuinely surprised, which is good. This is part of why I went to so much trouble. This car has fewer miles on it than most Accords in my price range, and it's overall in pretty decent condition. The catch? Salvage title.



For most buyers, I know, just hearing the word 'salvage' is enough for them to keep shopping. But I worked with a guy who swore by salvage cars. Always had nice rides, and he had a longer commute than I do now.

In order to be a salvage, as opposed to junk, title, the car has to be made roadworthy again and pass a state inspection. If it's done right, no problem. But if, for instance, the car can't be aligned because of frame damage or whatever, not so hot.




The hope was that by knowing a bit about salvage cars, I might be able to get a car that has more life left in it, take advantage of one of those rare information gaps in the market.

Then, after all that, we couldn't come to an Accord. Price. The seller is asking pretty close to what Kelley Blue Book puts this car in 'good' condition. I'm offering closer to what they say for 'fair' condition. It's not that the car isn't in 'good' condition in some respects: it is. But it still has some body damage, I think from the accident that got it totaled. While these are cosmetic and don't really bother me, they do affect the value of the car and if I find myself needing to sell, the buyers I find aren't going to forgive them either.

It's not even that we're all that far apart on price, and if the seller puts a different pencil to things, he has my number. If I haven't found another car, my offer would still be good. And whether he does that or not, I have no hard feelings. He was a good sport about me checking it out to my satisfaction before making an offer, and I understand that he was as frustrated to see me leave in the Buick as I was to walk away from a car that not only appears to meet all my 'need' criteria and most of my 'want' criteria after two trips to Lawrence and most of a day of my life investigating.