BurbleChaz

When I was last in the presence of reliable net access, I did some serious research on the current offerings of the local motor trade. On the excellent advice of The Locals, we went to Car City. This is a single huge area where about 40 second-hand car dealers do their best to part one from large lumps of the hard-earned. We had a good stroll round, and located most of the cars we had shortlisted. These included Toyota RAV4s, Honda CRVs and a beautiful plum-coloured Land Rover Freelander.

We kicked a few tyres, sat in a lot of cars, and generally tried to look as though we knew what we were doing. Then we went and had a bite to eat. Making decisions of this size should not be done on an empty stomach. Whether a butter-drenched ham and cheese toastie was actually required is, perhaps, questionable. We came to the following conclusions:

• 3-door RAV4s are smaller than a Yaris
• 5-door Honda CRVs are lovely. Particularly gold ones.
• I really, really like plum-coloured Freelanders

So, we took the Freelander for a spin. I loved it more and more. 2 litre turbo diesel. High-end leather trim. The sweet sound of the fuel pump. Wussy brakes. Smooth, light, assertive steering. Fantastic driving position. Fuel pump still there.

The Key Decision Maker had a go. Hated it. It felt, heavy, big, unwieldy and altogether too masculine. She drove it beautifully, including a three-point turn and lots of small suburban roads. Gradually hated it less. She started to appreciate the sheer quality of the beast.

We took it back, and left it with the dealer for a bit of a think. It had a sticker price of $17000. The car was built in '98, and registered in '00.The book price for trade in was a lot lower. Almost $6000 lower. That's a bit more than a set of alloy wheels. Also, no intercooler, as far as I could tell.. When i was doing my research, I discussed this with the locals. Australians see Land Rovers as British cars, and lump them in with Rover, MG and all the other rubbish. My theory was that we could arbitrage this erroneous thinking. I suspect that, buying privately, we could have done. However, there was no way the dealer was going to cut us the $4000 of slack we would have needed.

After a bit of a think, we decided to look at something else. There were a few to choose from, so The Quality Hound decided to start at the top end.

The car we tried next was on our shortlist as a price highwater mark. On the web, it was listed at $20000. A gold-coloured 2002 Honda CRV Sport. The Team Aesthete loved it. We had some doubts about even trying it. We were not going to pay that much for it. A couple of things made us have a go. Firstly, the sticker price had been dropped to $19000. The Less-Skilled Negotiater reasoned that they wouldn't want to drop again after that. I pointed out that this indicated that they were in a price-dropping mood, and wanted to shift it. Also, it's gold.

I drove it out of the yard and started to try to find fault with it. The gearbox is a bit clunky. There's no reassuring hammering from the fuel pump. Er. That's it really. Then the City Driver had a go.

She loved it. She felt confident, in command and relaxed from the first moment. She loved the smoothness, the finesse, the overall quality.

Because she's wonderful, she kept persuading me that she could learn to love the sweet, charming, plum-coloured Land Rover, but I knew where her heart was.

We stopped for a while and had a chat. It went back and forth for a while. Surprisingly, the Freelander was only mentioned when she tried to persuade me to indulge myself. The main question was how much we would pay for the CRV. We decided on a figure that we could afford comfortably, and would leave us with enough free cash for essentials like rent, food and fast dinghies. I was not optimistic that I could negotiate to that point.

We took it back, and had a chat with the dealer. We explained that although we liked the car, it was really over our budget. "So, how much would you buy it for?" This is where I Do My Bit. The Key Decision Maker does not enjoy haggling. I love it.

I named a price so ridiculously low that I thought it would cause apoplexy. He didn't meet it. He named a figure $200 higher. We asked him to leave us to discuss it, so he did. Five minutes later, we signed a deal for the car.

We're delighted. We're going to pick it up on Monday. We're getting a car that we thought was out of our price range for a number that we can afford without stress. It's such a lovely, civilised, pleasant, refined gas-guzzler.

I still wish it was plum-coloured.