The History:
Hi all, this post is about how I went from not knowing how to drive a car to buy 3 cars and sell 2 out of them in a span of one year. Well, the story is that I didn’t even knew driving and didn’t have a car till the time I was married. But my wife is an excellent driver and when we were expecting a baby it became more and more important for me to learn driving a car.
The Beginning:
To be honest right now I am crazy about cars and shows related to cars like Wheelers Dealers, Top Gear, Counting Cars, Garage Squad etc. and whatever show I can latch on to in my free time while this was not the case two years back, this may be because of I was not initiated to cars; I also think that I was also not having enough money to buy a car and maintain it. Well things changed after my MBA when I started to earn decent money but still buying a new car was a huge task in terms of money. Things further changed when I started a family it became more and more important to have a car. Just to tell the reader is that I am also a bike lover and have a Royal Enfield classic 350CC and I love it to the core.
The First Car:
While I took some driving lessons but I was still not very confident driving the car in full traffic roads so I decided to buy a used car.
I am working in a Steel company and in Feb’14 I got transferred to Bangalore and started searching for a used car. I searched the used car ads on Olx and considering my budget restricting me to spend less than 1L Rs, I zeroed on a Fiat Palio, Maruti Suzuki Zens and some Nanos. I first planned to go visit and see the Palio, well this was my first experience in buying a car and I was excited like a kid and fixed the deal for a 2002 year 1.6L petrol Fiat Palio GTX. I took a small personal loan to help with my purchase.
I got the ownership transferred and during the experience I learned that cars older than 10 years will be on 3rd party insurance and will not be covered under comprehensive insurance unless you get it inspected by the insurance company representative but after discussion with my wife we decided to get only the 3rd party insurance, I started driving the car in and around Bangalore and I drove it slowly and for that I got a lot of looks on Bangalore roads.
The car ran well for 3 months (I didn’t took it out outside Bangalore and ran it inside city only as one of my friendly neighborhood garage guy told me that it will not be a reliable car since its engine was tempered with and it was opened may be because of an accident etc.). But while on a trip to drop my relative to the Bangalore airport at the time of just entering the airport we saw smoke/steam coming out from under the hood/bonnet of the car. Thankfully it was a Sunday morning and hence we got a lot of time in hand. I had my wife with me and it was very early morning like 6 am but I didn’t know what to do, I parked the car in the parking lot and asked a radio cab driver for help on what to do, he looked at and told me that some pipe has burst leaking the coolant and recommended to keep pouring the water in the coolant tank and take it to the garage. I thanked him and paid him some money for his advice. I didn’t had any empty or filled bottle in my car so I collected some empty bottles which were thrown here and there in the airport parking lot and filled them all. Fortunately the car was starting and I started for the way back home and kept it below 3 gear and putting water in every 3-4 kms interval but steam/smoke was still coming from the car.
Well it a big ordeal to reach back home, also I could find any open garage on the way since it was early morning. While it took only 30 mins to come to the airport it took more than 3 hours to return back.
Next day I took it slowly to my friendly neighborhood garage (FNG) though I called the authorized service centers and tried to get the work done from there but I finally decided to get the work done by the FNG since it was closer and I can also learn a thing or two about cars in the process to address the issue.
The FNG guy told me that a inlet pipe got burst and he searched through his contacts to get it but he could not find it, I took the matters on my own hands and searched from shop to shop for the pipe and finally found it on one shop. The FNG guy okay-ed it and also thankfully the engine did not got damaged due to overheating. I enjoyed the car for 3 more months for the city trips. I changed the front two tires also for new. Things were okay with the car and one day my parents came down to Bangalore from Delhi and I sent the car to Delhi in a truck so that my father can also learn from it. Eventually my father exchanged the car in the exchange offer with the purchase of a Swift Dzire. So this was the story of my first car.
The Second Car:
Well driving cars is like an addiction and the more you drive the deeper you fell for more of it.So one day I was walking on the brigade road with my wife and a Mitsubishi Lancer zoomed past us, it was yellow in color and its exhaust was making a very sporty sound. I fell in love with the Lancer, the design, the stance of the car. I called my FNG guy and asked if he knows someone selling the car and he said yes. One of his known people was selling a Kerala registered car a 2002 Petrol model. I searched for some lancers on the Olx but could not find a good enough one. I decided to have a look at the FNG guy’s Lancer, the car had 38K on the ODO and since it was from a contact I went with it and fixed the deal with him. I again took a personal loan to help with the purchase. Very stupid of me. I seriously need to take some lessons in personal finances.
Well the car was a pleasure to drive and for the first time in my life I was driving such a big car. I did a 1000 Kms trip to Guruvayoor (Kerala) for my friend’s wedding and the car didn’t gave any issues at all. It returned a mileage of around 14.3 Kmpl. One of my college friend also accompanied with me in the trip and he also reassured that it was a very nice car and since he has been driving a longer time than me his words were a reassurance that my purchase was not bad.
In the mean time I paid the road tax for Karnataka and it was a whopping 47K for a 2002 car + 5K Cess + Agent fees and paying road tax and registering the car on my name was a task in itself since I didn’t had the original receipt with the car and hence the RTO guys took out the invoice of a 2002 Lancer and calculated the road tax. I tried hard that it was huge and stupid to pay so much road tax but anyways I was involved and had to pay it and also the RTO work took almost 3 months to transfer the car on my name. Anyways I enjoyed the car for the trips in and around Bangalore.
One day I thought of putting the car on Olx just to see if can sell it I got many immediate calls and thereby sold it to the first guy who contacted me. Well selling to this guy was a story in itself. He told me that he wanted to buy the car for his wife. He paid partial money and promised me that he will pay the remaining money soon citing some financial issues (well every one can have issues and I trusted him and his wife as they seemed decent folks). However this went on for 4 months and the guy stopped taking my calls and he also didn’t get the car transferred neither on his name nor to his wife’s and then I started panicking. To cut the long story short I finally received my money but that after a lot of followups and I also took charge of transferring the ownership from my name to the guy’s wife name and I spent money on it while the buyer has to bear the cost as per the norm. Anyways I am over it and this proved that sometimes buying and selling used things is not a cakewalk. The Lancer stayed with me for approx. 5 months.
The Third Car:
There was some silence on the car front but the bug to have a car again bite me again and I was again on the lookout. Honda Civic and Honda Jazz were my dream cars as I liked their designs but I can’t say the same in the present times. Just look at Honda Amaze and the new Jazz, Amaze is just like an extension of the Brio and the new Jazz is like cutting short the new City. What the heck Honda!! What has happened to your design engineers!! (I am sorry if this has hurt any one, these are my views and they may differ with others).
I looked for some old Civic and Jazzs on the classifieds this time apart from Olx on Car trade also. This time I went and saw some Jazz and Civics and didn’t just went for the first car I saw J. I also did some introspection on whether I should really be buying a used car at all or should I buy a new car at a later time (a smaller car which my budget could permit). A small car would cost me around 4L OTR (on the road) however I was getting a late 2007 or 2008 Honda Civic under 4L Rs post negotiations. My two earlier small personal loans being almost paid over, I was ready to take the plunge to buy another car by taking another personal loan with which my wife was really angry with me but what I can do? This is like an addiction. At least this is the only addiction I have. I purchased the 2007 Dec AT Civic. I promised myself that this is it no more cars.
Here is a summary of my car purchases May’14: Fiat Palio (exchanged in sept’15), Oct’14: Lancer (sold in Mar’15), May’15: Honda Civic (still with me
).
Honda Civic is an amazing car. I can go on and on about describing the benefits of this car. Its absolutely a looker, it looks so very beautiful, it drives so smoothly that I don’t know which present sedan can beat it. I mean it’s a 2007 car and I believe it can still beat some present sedans hand on. I did many trips to places like Yercaud, Chennai, Ooty etc. and with each trip I am falling in love with this car over and over again.