Our new prius

Introducing the newest addition to our family....

THE TOYOTA PRIUS!!

It all started with the debate of whether we needed a car for our stay in the US and the thought of having to bike up and down the hills of Seattle didn't sit very well with my butt. So since we are moving in a month's time, and driving up from Provo was a better idea than flying ourselves over and then shipping our belongings (the latter is sooooo expensive), WE DECIDED TO GET A CAR.

I knew that buying a car was probably going to be more work than online shopping but honestly, I didn't expect it to require multiple Excel spreadsheets and charts. Buying our HDB was alot loss hassle! Buying a car is like doing a final year project for school (I know I'm not the most qualified to say that since I never really did one).

Well, first, we had to decide on "how-many hand" car we wanted. Well, a brand new car was totally out our budget so we were looking for a pre-loved. Besides, most of the depreciation occurs during the first two years of a car's life.

We thought second hand cars would be ideal as advised by some online site but it seems like people here buy and sell cars like changing clothes so we settled on looking at x hand cars, where x was anything decent.

Second, we needed to narrow down our choices. I confess that I am not the most decisive human being on planet Earth but Mark is probaly the least. It was a good thing that we drove a Prius in Greece so at least we had something to begin with. We started by looking at pre-loved Priuses on KSL but they were all over our budget. So we did more research and got indecisive. Prius? Camry? Hybrid? Prius? Camry? Hybrid? Prius Camry Hybrid? Gah.

In the end, we managed to debug that infinite loop beacuse this table convinced us to go ahead with the hybrid Prius.

If you are planning to buy a new car (or if you are reading this blog and pretending that you are hard at work and would like to continue the pretense), you can get more helpful information regarding the costs of motor vehicles before you make your decision by clicking here.

While most Priuses were out of our budget, by a stroke of luck, we chanced upon a 2007 model that our wallets could afford. The owners took really good care of it and the mechanic that checked the car said that it was in pretty good shape =) The car was about 1h 15min away (ne way) though and we had to go up there three times ,so you can imagine what a sigh of relief when we finally got the keys in our hands! Boy, this makes me miss the tiny Singapore man.

We having been painting the town grey with our new car and check this out.

Haha. Ok ok, that was when we took it down the slope from Squaw Peak. I admit that's cheating a little. But seriously. The car gave us 52.4 mpg (19 km/l - I know, I don't understand why some people just refuse to use proper measurements) when we drove it home on the highway. My dad was shocked to see such numbers because my family's Toyota Picnic drinks gas (petrol) at a rate of 22.6 mpg (8km/l).

So here's to a greener Earth and more money in our pockets, thanks to our new hybrid.

Love,

Belle