Plant a tree, Grow a Forester

After a rough start to the month of February because of Holly's car problems, Holly and I started to look for a new car on various websites. To make the situation worse, Rusty (my Jetta) got some bad news. The week before I went to Utah, I brought my Jetta in for an oil change. The guys at the shop, who I trust a lot because of the help they gave me on Holly's car, recommended that I start to shop for a new car because the rust on my Jetta was starting to eat away at the frame of my car. They didn't say how long but said that the rust will eventually get bad enough to break the frame which would be the end for Rusty. Not good. This kicked Holly and I into high gear on the car search. We knew we wanted to buy an import car were unsure of which make. We looked all over and found a good deal on a 1999 Subaru Forester but the car was in Madison (70 miles away). We arranged to meet up with the guy selling it on a Sunday. On the way there, we were about half way, we got a flat tire on Rusty. I was cranky! We decided not to push our luck on the spare so we decided we would have to try again. Holly had class the next day so I drove up there by myself and I made it this time. After driving the car and looking it over I decided that it would be a good buy so we bought it by putting money down until I could come back with Holly the next day. The car was listed at $4,300 and we bought it for $3,900 which was about the most I wanted to pay so pretty good deal. 

Here is our new car, 1999 Subaru Forester L. It's green (must be my color for cars) and is all-wheel drive.

 

Plus its a manual transmission. I really like driving stick cars and got lucky this one has it. Not a requirement but an added bonus for me anyways.

The odometer reads 102662. That is not bad for a car that is 11 years old. The car was originally owned in New York and now lives in Milwaukee!

All nice and clean on the inside. Lets keep it that way!

Here is the back. Big hatch back door will make it easy for trips to and from Minnesota and for when we move home in the future.

Look at all that trunk space plus the seats fold down flat. I like the floor mat in the trunk. It will make it easy to clean if the trunk does get dirty.

The only little bit of rust on the car. Hopefully it doesn't get any worse and turn out like Rusty. Keep your fingers crossed.

The front of the car looks pretty awesome in my opinion. I like the fog lights at the bottom. No hood scoop like snowflake has.

I brought the car to the shop I have been going to for them to do a inspection of it last Wednesday. I think we got pretty lucky that we bought the car from a honest guy that said things had been fixed without any paper work saying so. They did an inspection of it and found no major problems, just a few small maintenance things like breaks and struts. No real engine issues. I made sure to have them check for a new head gasket because I was told that was replaced and it had been. Thank you for there still being honest and trustworthy people like the guy we bought it from. It was the only car we went to look at and ended up buying it we liked it and more importantly I trusted the guy when he said things that had been fixed.

We have officially owned the car for 3 weeks now. The reason that it has taken me so long to post is because until today it really hasn't felt like our car. When we bought the car, the guy we bought the car from took the plates off of it. The reason why is because in Wisconsin plates are registered to the person instead of the car like in Minnesota. He planned on putting them on his next car. Kind of confusing. I didn't know which state to register it in and I needed to get official plates from somewhere. For the time being it had the plates from Holly's old car but we didn't drive it anywhere but home from Madison. I decided to register it in Minnesota because it was cheaper and then we wouldn't have to re-register when we moved back. Also, tabs are more expensive here along with the fact you need to do emissions tests every year or two. To register it in MN, I would have to make a special trip home to do it. Instead I mailed the Wisconsin Title to my parents and they registered the car in their name for us so we could have Minnesota Plates. This is kind of legal for us because Holly will be driving it for a while and she is a student and they have exceptions to the law for students, lucky us.

Here are the plates. I just got them in the mail today from my parents. The car is officially ours now. It feels really good to finally have the title/plates issue taken care of and knowing after the inspection that we really did find a good car with no issues. Still working on a name for it. Any suggestions? Can't wait to show it off. Maybe around Easter...