Sometimes it seems there’s no way to get what you want within the parameters you’re working with. And then something like today happens and reminds me that I don’t have to try so hard, I have to allow things to unfold. It’s quite marvelous how what seems impossible can happen with so easily with so little effort.

A few months ago I bought a new car after my previous car being totaled in an accident. So why was I once again looking for a new vehicle?

Here in Israel there’s an interesting phenomenon: families with several children will often choose to buy a smaller vehicle that doesn’t seat all their family members when traveling at one time, rather than getting a minivan. When living in the US, I never heard of anyone making a choice like this, but it’s very, very common in Israel.

The reason this is done here is because the costs of buying and fueling a larger vehicle are significantly higher. Often, families will rent a second car to travel together during vacation but keep their daily mode of transportation a smaller and more affordable car.

We made a similar decision when we bought our first car over a year and a half ago. Though we’re a large family and in the US I drove a full size 12 passenger van, I mostly needed something to get around locally for errands, and for that a small car was fine. We have great bus transportation and sending older kids on buses if we don’t have room for everyone is an option, as strange as that might sound to those who don’t live in Israel!

However, with our decision to move to northern Israel came a realization that we would need a larger vehicle. (We didn’t know we’d be moving to the north when we bought the replacement car or we would have made a different choice.) Public transportation where we’ll be living is weak and having a couple more seats will make a big difference.

I didn’t want to leave the selling and buying of a car for when we’re moving since there will be plenty of other things to do, so I decided to do this now. Almost three weeks ago, I sold our five seater.

Prior to selling and since then, I’ve spent waaaaay too long reading every bit of data I could get on various makes and models. The more I read, the fewer choices I seemed to have. I wanted a number of features and when considering my very conservative budget, even a basic functional car of that size looked completely unrealistic. It as also complicated by the fact that every time I found something suitable, my husband would raise concerns.

I would have been totally discouraged and overwhelmed if I didn’t continually remind myself that somehow we would find something that would work for us no matter how unlikely it seemed. (And I also reminded my husband he could trust me to buy the car as I’ve always done it and it’s always been fine.)

The choices that were the most affordable, spacious and gas efficient were all made by French manufacturers. None of these companies have a reputation for long lasting/hard wearing vehicles, and I was concerned that my lower acquisition costs would be more than offset by ongoing repair costs. When a mechanic for one of these companies dealerships told me to stay away from them, that finalized my decision to look at other options.

I thought and thought and thought some more about what was most important to me, and finally edited my original list to the following priorities:

• Japanese manufactured
• well-maintained
• decent fuel efficiency
• non-diesel engine (because I want to convert the engine to run on propane fuel and diesel vehicles can’t be converted)
• price below xxx shekels (this is so low that I don’t feel comfortable writing it :))

Last night I decided to look at a car model I hadn’t previously considered due to a concern that the very back two seats wouldn’t be be comfortable for my hulking sons. 🙂 When I checked out the listings online for sale by private owner (I don’t buy from dealers), one stood out to me among a number of listings for the same model, year, mileage and price.

Sometimes I get a feeling about things; from just the wording of the ad I’d be hard pressed to explain why one listing calls to me and similar one doesn’t. I do think there’s an element of logic mixed in with it; it’s not all based on my gut feeling.

This car had slightly higher mileage than most of them, but there was nothing in my price range that wasn’t high mileage. My biggest concerns about buying vehicles that were older and high mileage was that it we might have to replace the engine or transmission in the near future, both very big expenses.

One of the things I debated with myself is if it would be more financially prudent to spend more on a newer car upfront to minimize the possible repair costs. However, we would have to dramatically jump up in price and of course there’s never any guarantee that even a newer car with lower mileage won’t need expensive repairs – in my reading in different forums I read a number of worrying stories like that. So I stayed with my original low price point.

When I called about the car I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the engine had been replaced three months ago – there was no mention of this in the ad.

Both the wife who took my initial phone call and the husband who showed me the car were very honest and forthcoming with information. Before I went to check out the car, I was pretty sure that unless something was really wrong when I saw it that I would be driving it back home with me. 🙂

(When I buy a car, I’m buying in large part based on my feeling about the seller. Buying a used car is unpredictable and I need to trust the person who is selling it and what they are telling me. Yesterday I looked at a car and within one minute of meeting the seller knew I wouldn’t buy the car. Not because of the car, but because of the seller. )

It was only because of a specific question while test driving the car today that I asked that I learned that the transmission was replaced six weeks ago! In two conversations with the sellers, neither of them thought of mentioning that to me, even though that was a very positive factor in favor of the car.

After the sale was completed, I looked at my long list of things I wanted that I had put aside so I could focus on the basics, and I got every single thing. Every single one.

Here’s the longer list:

• Seller location – since I was traveling by bus to check out the potential options, I was hoping to find something not too far from home even though I was looking online at cars across the country. These sellers listed their location as the city where the wife works, which would have been very time consuming and difficult for me to access by public transportation. Another reason I shouldn’t have called them. They live just a a 25 minute bus ride from here and that’s where I saw the car.
• Roof rack – knowing we’d have a small trunk, I wanted to have a space to load up for trips
• Trailer hitch – this seemed an unlikely feature to find in the class of vehicles I was looking at but a previous owner had it installed
• Tinted windows – this cuts down on the heat quite a bit in the summer and one of my kids requested it
• Driver seating position – I prefer sitting higher up to have a better view, with my legs more vertical than horizontal
• Head space – my last car didn’t have much and I missed having that
• Feel of driving a car rather than a minivan
• Propane system – this was complicated because I didn’t want to spend the money to put in the system on an old engine, and I didn’t want to buy a car already converted since a poorly done conversion can shorten the engine life. In any case, only a very small percentage of cars are converted to run on propane. This car had a propane system installed by a reputable installer, then it was reinstalled on the new engine.

This last point was the one that made the entire buying effort seem impossible. I wanted a newish engine already converted to run on propane by a reputable installer that I recognized (which totals three names in the entire country) at a ridiculously low price, or as a very much less appealing distant second option that I almost don’t want to mention because I really didn’t want to do this, a car so cheap I could afford to replace the engine and put in the propane system (adding lots of aggravation and at least 11,000 shekels to my purchase cost).

Was that situation with the propane alone extremely unlikely? Yes. Combined with all these other things, it was very, very, very unlikely.

And yet, that’s exactly what I got!

How could I have gotten all of this for the very low price I had budgeted?

Here’s an amazing bit of synchronicity regarding the price! (This is when in my house I burst into song, G-d Loves Me!!! Yes, I really do that.No, my children don’t always deeply appreciate my constant singing about everything but that’s the mother they have. :))

After having their vehicle on the market at fair market value for a month and not seeing movement, the sellers decided to get it sold and dramatically cut the price yesterday. It was last night when I decided to consider this model and saw the listing.

They listed it for 100 shekels less than my budgeted amount (remember, with none of the information about the very recent and expensive work they had done – they just wrote ‘excellent condition’).

I heard a statement somewhere (I wish I remember where so I could credit it): “Whatever you are looking for is looking for you.” I felt that so much with this purchase.

No, the car isn’t perfect. I didn’t have that on either of my lists! But it’s a really good fit for me and it’s been really wonderful to see this manifest in this way.

Avivah