After exactly 10 years + 1 month with the blue Aveo, we finally decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to a new car! She was starting to show her age; rust was becoming a problem, plus a few mechanical issues over the past year or so were signs that the end was nigh. Since picking her up March 9, 2005, we put 94,823 km on the odometer, or the equivalent of 2,495 trips between Dockyard and St. George’s!
Car shopping isn’t exactly the same here as it is typically in North America – there are car dealers, yes, but stock is severely limited and typically each one only brings in a small number of cars per month. You don’t really get to choose your options other than the color, so long as they have that color on order!
With this in mind, we admittedly didn’t do too much shopping around; we had an idea of what our budget would be and what sort of vehicle we wanted, and as mentioned there aren’t many new cars to choose from here on the island. Quite often the cars are also sold before they arrive – someone sees a showroom model, likes it, and puts a deposit down on ones that are being shipped over. This is what we did – saw a car we liked in the showroom (a Suzuki Ertiga), found out there are two on their way so put a deposit down in order to get one of them… otherwise we would have to wait another month!
The old Aveo was lacking in, well, everything in the feature department – which made us easy to please! The Ertiga isn’t luxurious by any standard, but when you’re used to not having tinted power windows or power door locks, these small modern conveniences make it all the more nicer! There is lots of room in the new car – three rows of seating – and having better air conditioning, a decent stereo with a USB / iPod input, an automatic transmission, and proper alloy wheels, it looks and feels a lot more luxurious than the Aveo for sure. Plus an added bonus: cool-looking fog lights. Oh yeah.
We picked up the car this past Thursday, and after driving it for a few days, I can say that I think we’ll be pretty happy with the new car. Hoping now that we have more room we might have some more visitors in the near future, too…!