Car purchasing

I'm now getting pretty excited about the whole car purchasing thing, and I'm finding it quite fun to go about looking for cars. I felt I was restricting myself to the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix thing too much because I really hadn't researched what else was out there.

So I went for a walk around in a caryard to see if I could find anything that I liked. What was the closest caryard? The one just outside. There are probably a couple of thousand cars in the parking lot and this gives me the perfect opportunity to go around and look for something that fits the above criteria. I found one that caught my eye: the Mazda Protege5. This is based upon the reliable Mazda Protege platform and from what I've been reading on the Internets is pretty good value for money and very reliable. I'm leaning towards a second hand version of whatever car I get because, believe it or not, I'm in money saving mode at the moment and I'm really tightening down the screws so I can afford to travel around.

Anyway this weekend I will be test driving the Mazda Protege5 plus anything else I notice. I think the only thing that will really be a thorn in my side will be car insurance, but with some advice I've received from friends I should be able combat that.

Ooh, and where am I going to be living? Not far from where I live now, which makes it about 10 minutes from work. This is good, because not only is it still close but it's also cheap and I can carpool to work. Thank god that was organised without too much hassle. Whatever the case, Aug 25th is approaching fast and I want to have this all sorted.