I feel lucky

I feel really lucky to have located this vehicle the way I did. I'd been thinking about getting a second car for quite a while. I'd looked at hundreds of ads on the Internet, and I'd picked out three or four dealerships that I thought I'd visit to check out the possibilities.

By the way, the photos in this post appear exactly as they came out of the camera. I took them yesterday late in the morning, when I got home with the Citroën. I haven't retouched the colors in Photoshop at all.

In December, I decided to pull my funds together. About that time, the dollar started rising against the euro. That motivated me to speed up my search for a car.

And then one day in January I was headed to Intermarché to do some grocery shopping when I noticed a car just like the one I had in mind sitting on the lot at a Renault dealership across the river in Noyers-sur-Cher, not 3 miles from our house.

I drove by there two or three more times in January before I decided to stop one day and see what the sign hanging inside the car, off the rear-view mirror, had written on it.

I was surprised at how low the mileage was — the car has been driven an average of only *11,000 km (7,000 miles) per year* (I mixed up my figures in an earlier version of this post) since it was first registered. I was pleased to see how low the price was — only about two-thirds of what I had budgeted. And I was pleased to see that the car was in such good condition.

A few days later, I called the dealer. Walt pointed out that I really ought to drive a C4 before I made a decision. I figured I could drive this car without feeling obligated to buy it, after all. Maybe I'd hate it.

As it turned out, I didn't have to deal with individuals selling cars on the web. I didn't have to go talk to several car dealers to try to find what I wanted. And if the car needs service, the dealer's garage is close by. The car has a warranty. The dealer is a local man who has a reputation to maintain.

When I lived in the U.S., I bought new cars. I had five of them over the years. I did own a couple of used cars back in the 1970s, but I kept each one of them only a year or two. One was a Subaru that I bought from a friend who was leaving the U.S. for a job overseas.

People used to say that buying a used car was buying somebody else's problems. The fact is, cars nowadays are much more reliable for a longer period of time than they used to be. I've had the little Peugeot since August 2003, and I bought it used. It has needed some repairs over the years, but nothing really major. It's been a great car. Now I've realized that it needs a new timing belt pretty soon if we are going to keep it.

You can click or tap on the pictures to see them at a larger size. As for the car's color, it looks different on each screen (computers, tablets) that I use to view the photos — less mauve on some, and more gray. Since all the displays are calibrated differently, it's hard to know which one is more accurate or true.