New Car Coming--Sooner than Expected!

So. Last week I drove the Jeep Compass to take Terry up to Corning Hospital to get her knee scoped. Along Route 15 I noticed some vibration in the front end at 65-70 mph and told Terry she should get it checked out before she drives to St. Louis next month.

Yesterday she dropped it off at the Jeep dealer in Mansfield and they called back saying it needed new front brakes, new tires ("the belts inside were broken"), an alignment, a new tie rod, new struts, and a couple of other things. Total would be around $3000. This is a car they had in the shop last spring because one of the front brakes was making a squeeling sound. Now, I'm not a mechanic, but the Compass doesn't get a lot of miles put on it during the summer. It basically sits on the side of the house. It's one "big" trip was to the Carolinas and back. (On second thought, maybe we should stop going to Columbia, SC. Every time we do something needs an alignment.)

Anyway, we had been thinking of replacing the 2009 Compass and had already started to do some research. We had narrowed our choices down somewhat but had hoped to wait until spring or fall 2018. I told the Jeep people not to do any work and Terry and I drove over to Williams Toyota to see what they had available. Our targets there were the Sienna and the Rav4. They needed to have either 4-wheel or all-wheel drive because, hey!, we live in hilly snow country.

Well, Terry thought the Sienna too huge for her needs (the third row seating was just a little too much), but liked the size of the Rav4. The only model with all-wheel drive (AWD) on the lot was a base model in a pretty plumb color which we did take for a short test drive. Terry liked it, but I wanted a few more bells and whistles than the base model offered. They did have an XLE with AWD in Barcelona Red (same as the my Tundra) over on the Elmira lot, however. We could get either $2500 cash back or 0% financing on the Rav4.

So, we go back on Saturday to look at the XLE and--probably--sign some papers.