Had to Get a New Car

My wife's (now "prior") car, a 2012 Mini Countryman, was just a couple months away from being thirteen years old. We'd ordered it in October of 2012. Local dealerships have, since at least 2010, kept very minimal selections of cars with manual-transmissions on their lots. Local dealerships have, since at least the late 90s, have also mostly kept "HOA-friendly" car colors (greys, silvers, blacks, whites and tans) on their lots. Between wanting a manual transmission and wanting an actual color, we had to order that car rather than being able to drive it away the same day we went to see what they had. On the plus side, they did have one car with a manual transmission, so we weren't buying wholly blind. At any rate, we'd ordered a "chili" red Countryman that finally arrived Thanksgiving week of 2012. We were out of area for the holidays, so we couldn't pick it up until the 28th.

Last year, it started to become expensive to maintain:

• A/C had become anemic in 2023 — unable to keep up with the DC summer heat when we took a road-trip to Hampton, VA  — and had all but quit by spring of 2024. So, we had to get a refrigerant recharge that May. Cost to get the recharge: nearly $1,000 
• We experienced a timing-chain failure a couple months later. Cost to repair: a shade over $6,500
• During an unusually warm period, late that autumn, we noticed that the A/C was again no longer functioning. We'd assumed that there was an age-related leak in the A/C lines and that the refrigerant we'd gotten that spring had leaked out. When we finally opted to get it fixed, this past spring, the cause had been discovered to be that during one of our trips to my mom's house, a stone had gotten up into the engine compartment and punctured the compressor. Cost to repair: a bit over $2,000
• Earlier this summer, as I was pulling out of our driveway to go to the gym, I heard a loud bang. I quickly pulled over to investigate and found a piece of metal in the road in front of our driveway at pretty much the exact location the "bang" had come from. Got the car back up in the driveway to investigate and found that the right-rear spring had broken. Cost to repair: another $2,000+

At that point, I was in the "I don't know that I can justify throwing this kind of money at a nearly 13yo car" state of mine. A couple weeks ago, as we were leaving the grocery store, the shift-selector stopped working. I thought, "great: another four- to five-figure repair bill," and decided, "I'm gonna start looking for replacement options while I wait for the estimate." Ultimately, the failure wasn't as drastic as I'd feared — the linkage-cable that connected the gear-selector's R, 1 and 2 to the gearbox had snapped. "Only" $1,500 to repair.

However, by that point, I was well into my new car shopping. When I'd started visiting dealerships, I'd figured "no trade-in" since, at nearly 13yo, I'd assumed that the repair cost was going to be higher than the trade-in value. Once I had the repair estimate, I called all the dealerships (whose cars I'd liked) back to ask about a likely trade-in value. I'd checked Edmunds for an expected value based on the condition of the Mini and it being driveable. All of the dealerships came in at the high end of what Edmunds said I should reasonably expect. So, I authorized the repair.

When I'd first gotten the repair estimate for the timing-chain, I'd had the shop hold off on the repair while I applied for and received a credit card with a 0% introductory APR and a generous credit limit. I'd put that and all subsequent repairs on that card and started paying it off. Given that Edmunds was telling me that it should be worth paying off and, even if the dealerships got fucky, I'd at least have the Mini back in driveable condition, I pulled the trigger. 

There was no fuckery, so we ended up buying a new car. Of all the cars we looked at, we ended up with a 2025 Volvo EX30:

 

It was just too fun to drive to say "no" to. I've never had a Volvo before. Never would have looked at a Volvo because, in my mind, they were staid, boxy cars for old people overly concerned about vehicle safety. Which is to, cars that had no focus on being fun to drive. With 440 brake horesepower, a 0-60 time of 3.4s, stiff suspension that makes for great cornering, this one was the most fun to drive of all the EVs we tried out. It was also the smallest we could find — being the same height and width as our Mini and only 6" longer.