The good bloggers of the M-Network have been talking about cars this week and invited other bloggers to join them in the discussion.

I’ve owned three new cars and let me tell you, I love new cars. Unapologetically love them.

Growing up, used resuscitated cars were the standard. My first car was an old beat-up Toyota Celica that my brother had driven before me and someone else had beat up before him. When it died, we bought a cute little used Honda Civic CVC that was eventually passed down to my mom when her Dodge Omni died. At that point I bought a used Toyota truck that had sustained hail damage. I loved that truck and eventually gave it to my youngest sister when she went off to college. She killed it on a road trip by not heeding an idiot light. The only used car I owned that didn’t last long was a little used Datsun that I bought for my younger sister. One night it was hit and totalled as it sat parked in front of the house.

I bought my first new car, a bare-bones, nothing-extra Toyota Corolla, when I was 19. Actually I leased it and, when the lease was up, I bought it. It was an ‘84 and when I drove it off the lot it had less than 100 miles on it. I bought it because I was the only one in the family gainfully employed enough to qualify for financing and able afford the $100 monthly payment. I went for the lease instead of a loan because that was the only way to get the payments low enough that I could afford them. In hindsight, I know that in the long run I paid a lot more than the purchase price of the car but live and learn.

By 1995, that Corolla had seen me through three jobs, trade school, two years of college, marriage, and two children.

On July 4, 1995, we bought a brand new Subaru Legacy wagon — a bare-bones, nothing-extra family wagon. We paid cash and drove it off the lot. It had less than 200 miles on it and I’m pretty sure I put a good 60 of them on myself in the course of my test drives. At this point, I took over the new Subaru and The Husband drove the Corolla.

He drove the Corolla for another four years. It finally gave up the ghost with 170,000+ miles on it. I’m sure it would have lasted longer had it not been for the brutal paper route I drove after The Daughter was born and the four years of gear-grinding abuse it took from The Husband (he had been driving nothing but automatics for umpteen years). When the Corolla died, I was 31 years old.

The Husband replaced the Toyota with a used car — a really dumb, unresearched impulse buy that he ended up sinking a lot of money into over the next three years. We finally gave up on that car and, in 2002, bought a used Toyota SUV.

At this point The Husband and I switched cars again — I got the new used SUV to drive and he drove the Subaru.

Just this summer we decided it was time to finally replace the Subaru. It was 12 years old and had over 220,000 miles on it. It was still running pretty well but it had a few slow leaks that we knew were going to need attention before too long. The final straw was that it was a manual transmission and my Fibromyalgia made it virtually impossible for me to drive it when necessary.

Before the Corolla and then the Legacy, The Husband had never owned a car that had managed to top 100k without needing extensive mechanical work. Now he was hooked. In the spirit of “don’t mess with sucess,” just this July we bought a brand new — you guessed it, bare-bones, nothing-extra — Subaru Impreza wagon. It had approximately 200 miles on it when we drove it off the lot. This time I knew more about buying a car. We went through Costco’s car-buying program and got a good deal on it (dealer invoice, we retained the $1,500 rebate which was applied to the loan, and a 2-year loan at 1.9% — we could have paid cash but took the low financing instead).

And that’s were we stand today. One brand new Subaru and one reliable but aging used Toyota.

And so you see, I’ve got nothing against used cars. But I love new cars.

Yup, that’s right, I love new cars. And not for the new car smell — which I happen to hate. And not for any kind of “cool” factor or status symbol. I love new cars because I can account for every mile put on them. I know that they been serviced regularly and carefully maintained. I know they’ve never been red-lined or otherwise abused. I know that they haven’t been smoked in. I know they haven’t been puked in, and if they were, it was my own kids’ puke. I know every meal that’s been eaten in them, every trip they’ve taken, every repair they’ve had. I love taking a car from “cradle to grave.”

I love new cars because I know what I’ll be driving for next 12 to 15 years.

Other articles written this week about cars include:

• Moolanomy writes about new v. used, insurance, maintenance, and hidden expenses in My Cars and My Life
• The Dough Roller tells us about a new website in Service Beacon: A Free Online Tool to Track Your Car’s Maintenance Schedule and History
• Gather Little by Little pokes fun at people like me in 5 Reasons You Should Buy a New Car
• Cash Money Life argues for trading v. selling your old car in Save Time and Money by Trading in Your Car
• Budget of destiny asks New or Old what kind of car do YOU buy?

So, what was the last car you bought? Was it new or used? Why’d you buy it? How long do you expect it to last?

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