Recently, my better half finished up at work and returned the work car. Our only car.
For a while, we toyed with the idea of going car free. In the end, we decided that living without a car in 2006 only really works when you can sometimes say: "Screw it! Let's get a taxi." In a few weeks, we'll have three kids under five — and we already know it's hard enough trying to hail a taxi with one child seat, let alone three.
So, we decided to buy a car.
Our first stop was the federal government's
Green Vehicle Guide. Pretty quickly we realised that all the five star cars were out of our price range, but we could afford a Toyota Corolla with an impressive 4.5 stars. Decision made.
We did our research, identified the maximum age and mileage we'd accept, and hit the car sale websites.
Initially, it was hard finding a car in the appropriate condition in our price range, but then we lucked onto a vehicle for sale just down the road in Alexandria. Right age. Right mileage. Right price. We headed straight over.
We were in luck. It was in great nick, just like the ad said. We just had to turn a blind eye to the "
racing steering wheel" (I didn't even know they existed!), the "
racing pedals" (even stranger!), racing gear stick, air spoiler, stabiliser bar, alloy wheels, bazooka-sized exhaust pipe and some doo-dad near the steering wheel that I think is a petrolhead's version of "going to number 11" (quoting
Spinal Tap).
In fact, the only thing it didn't have was the thing we really needed — three, easily accessible anchor points for our child seats. To install them, we had to get the car modified by
Karlisles and then signed off by an RTA engineer.
And that's how we ended up owning the world's most fuel-efficient three-baby-seat hoonmobile. It might look nasty, but like I said, we were born to be mild.
