10 years in the 602 (Chapter 6)

It's Tuesday afternoon, and I'm sitting outside in wonderful 78° weather blogging from my laptop (my own connection, for the record - although I see two others available, I'm not skatin' on a neighbor's wireless). If you're living someplace in New England, I apologize, but the weather's finally cooling down after a summer of record highs - we deserve this.

I just realized that our car (a '96 Toyota Corolla) is ten years old now - as I recall, we bought it just before Thanksgiving in '95. We had looked at a Saturn, and kind of liked it, but we didn't care for the color choice: any color we wanted, so long as it was monkey-excrement brown. So much for Saturn's vaunted customer service - they apparently couldn't even get a decent color from another dealership. So Toyota got our business.

Not that Toyota was all that thrilled, either. As a member of MECU (Motorola Employee's Credit Union - now TruWest), I got discounts at certain dealerships. With all of the Motorolans in the Valley (certainly not the case now!), there were some very good discounts offered. When we went to Toyota, three car salespeople descended upon us, and seemed excited until we told them we needed the Fleet Department. They pointed us to the Fleet salesman, who took us on top of the parking garage to show us the Corollas. With MECU behind us, we got it for the published rate of $50 over invoice. Armed with the Blue Book, we knew we got a pretty good deal (and the salesman showed us the invoice).

It ain't fancy (it's the lowest trim level), but it's got 4 doors, decent gas milage, and gets me from point A to point B.