My First Car

Just before I passed my test, hubby and I decided to buy a car. He had passed his test 6 months earlier. So the search began for our first car! We researched for the best car for new drivers; we wanted a reliable, fairly cheap starter car that we would want to keep for some time. The other thing to take into consideration was the insurance we would have to pay for being a new driver. We looked at many different cars and narrowed it down to a Daewoo Matiz and Fiat Punto. They were both really cheap to buy and insure. The Daewoo Matiz was very small you couldn’t fit a pram or a load of shopping in the back and it looked really fragile. We went to see a specialist Fiat Punto dealer in Manchester and there were many cars to choose from. When we asked about the service history we found that the Fiat Punto was well renowned for having a faulty engine. We were back to the drawing board trying to decide on our first car. In those days money was tight hubby was a graduate earning a meager wage and I was 19 trying to decide what I wanted to do in life. We managed to scrape together £2000 and this was our budget. I could’ve asked Mum for some help but I wanted to do it on my own so we continued our search for our perfect first car.

Love at first sight
We decided that we would go to car dealers and see what we liked then research what we saw. We went to a car dealership and found we were spoilt for choice. How could you possibly choose one car out of the hundreds that were there. Suddenly our £2000 that we worked so hard to save seemed like peanuts and it seemed impossible to find a car that fit our budget. Then just as we were about to leave my husband saw a one year old blue Nissan Micra hiding at the back. We never considered a Nissan before (the new shape Nissan not the old one). We decided to sit inside and see if we liked it. We went in had a little fiddle around with the controls and hubby had to make sure it wasn’t uncomfortable; at just over 6ft it could cause a problem. He didn’t have any problems driving comfortably with his long legs and I could see myself driving this car to work. At £4800 it was two times over our budget. We had a hard decision to make – buy it and be broke or find some way of raising the money.

Financing our car
We researched and found that we couldn’t go wrong with the Nissan Micra and decided to take a loan because hubby had graduated and he could get a student loan at a reasonable rate. We agreed that we would pay it off within a year as it was a 5 year agreement and this would dampen our chances of getting a mortgage approved later on. We decided to check insurance for the car and was shocked the quotes were coming in at £2500 – it was crazy! If we add this to the price of the car it brings it up to £7400 and it was just too silly. This didn’t even include road tax and general maintenance. We persisted and got our car insurance quote down to £1200. We went back to the car dealer and got the price of the £4800 Nissan Micra dropped to £4500 with a year’s road tax included. The car already had one year left on the warranty so we didn’t have to worry if anything should go wrong with the car.

Driving away with our new car was like a dream – we were very cautious not to get it dirty and sticking to the speed limit. Hubby stalled it countless of times before we got it into the driveway but then again it was the first time he had driven a car he wasn’t used to. It’s been three years since we purchased our Nissan Micra and I’m pleased to say we haven’t had any problems and it the most reliable car we’ve had yet. It’s now time to purchase a new car as we are now expecting twins and our 3 door Nissan Micra will be a tight squeeze with two car seats at the back so the search begins again.