Vehicles in motion

[rmd]

Well, it's time. My beloved MINI is getting a bit long in the tooth and it seems like it's getting ready to go live on a farm in the country where it can frolic with the other parts cars. So I figured that I'd stay ahead of the game and start figuring out what to replace it with. I opted for a Honda Fit, and then the July 4th sale incentives hit, so I'm going to be picking up a new Fit next week.

They offered me kind of crap value for trade-in on the mini (to be fair, they think they'll just send it to auction), so I'll probably swing by one of the used car places in Somerville and see if they'll do better. If not, I'll see if the dealership will go for slightly less cash and throw in a bunch of accessories. I'm trying to figure out if it's worth the annoyance and work to do a private sale via CL or ebay or something. I suspect not.

Since the Fit is more spacious than the MINI, I figure if I get a set of roof racks for that, it'll cover 95% of what I do with the truck, so I can get rid of the truck as well.

Comments

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

One advantage of trading-in your old MINI when you purchase a new car is that the Sales Tax is based upon what you gave the dealer after the trade-in.

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

To the best of my knowledge, this is no longer true.

[irilyth]

If long-distance (more than 60 mi/day) driving isn't an issue, I *love* my 2013 Leaf.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Not so much. I regularly do one-day round trips to the middle of Cape Cod, plus I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect my current electrical service can't support an at-home charger if it's the typical big 40A types.

I occasionally check in on the state of the art with regard to electric motorcycles/vespa-scooters and electric bikes etc, since my usual work commute is just across the length of Somerville.

[irilyth]

You can charge on a 120V outlet at about 4 miles of range per hour, so if you only ever go 30 or 40 miles in a day, you can recharge overnight at home off a regular outlet. I was doing this for a while, until Chargepoint put in free chargers at the garage at work. :^)

You could probably get down to the Cape, but you'd want a 240V charger there in order to make it home that day. (If you could park it for 24 hours, you could charge off of 120V there too, but that's pretty limiting.) So that's probably not very feasible.

Higher-range options are coming soon, but not yet. (Is my vague impression, if you've spent any time at all looking at this then you probably know more than I do. :^)

[pywaket.livejournal.com]

BTW, if you're considering electric bikes, let me know. I'm working for a company that builds them...

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Why not another MINI?

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I really want something with 4 doors (well, 5 if you count the hatch as a door). MINI finally offers a 4 door model that's not the strangely-hulked-up Countryman model, but there's not a whole lot of cargo room there, still. The Fit has surprising amounts of cargo room, and I figure a Fit with a set of roof racks will handle at least 95% what I've used the truck for, so that means I can get rid of the truck as well over the summer. Also, repairs in the Honda ecosystem are a whole lot less pricey than repairs in the greater BMW ecosystem.

It's not as pretty, and it's not as sporty, but it is also notably cheaper - the Fit in trim I'm getting (EX-L) has a list price that's the same as the absolute base model of the 4 door hardtop MINI.

4 door mini

[diagonti.livejournal.com]

I actually bought one of the 4-door mini's with a roof rack. Its bigger than the 2-door, but not a lot. The Fit can definitely carry more. With that said, I mostly keep the rear seats down and at least for my use case (2 person household, road tripping, larping) its been plenty big enough. So much so I've not actually used the roof rack yet.

So yeah, the fit is less expensive to buy & own, and probably more practical. But the mini has its charm. :)

Re: 4 door mini

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Oh cool! Yeah, the Mini has its charms. I've been in the fit for a few days, now, and between it being new and it not having a suspension tuned to let me feel every pothole, it's a bit like driving a couch in comparison with the cooper S. :)

How've you been?

[bex77]

Best of luck!

When I was trying to sell my Mom's 10 year old car, I had good luck with John's Auto Sales on the corner of Somerville Ave. and McGrath Hwy, next to Burger King and across from Target. When no one else would give me anything, he offered half the Blue Book value.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I actually talked to them yesterday, and they told me (non-binding) that they'd give me about 1000-1200, which is closer to what I'd been expecting from the dealer. I may sell it to a friend who's interested for less than that, though, which might be a net win all around.