low budget   mountain living  

So when we found out that the insurance was not going to fix my car, I already had hubby scheduled to see a few used cars in a couple price ranges and a detailed count of all our pennies to know what we would have on hand.  Of course, without some inflow of cash we would only be able to afford an older cheapie that may or may not be running days after purchase.

However, my deep searches of Craigslist found a gem (hopefully) because the person putting up the ad didn't know how to use craigslist well and the title and description wasn't even getting her calls about the car.  Of course it was still well out of our price range until the insurance cut hubby a check, and even then at the penny-pinching point.

Of course, we found out that the car is also on a re-built salvage title, so that made me pretty nervous about it, but for the year (2007) and condition, it could still be a good value if it was truly in good running order.  I did research on what values would be appropriate for a salvage title on the car, and hubby got her talked down to what we hope was a very reasonable price with my help.

So now we are the proud owners of the only Suzuki SX4 in town that didn't cost $6,000 to $10,000 in private sale.  In fact, she wanted $4,000 and we got her talked down to $3,200 because of the salvage title.

Why an SX4?  Well... besides the fact that it looks a whole lot like a modern day Justy, it is a small compact car sized "SUV" and one of the only available in it's class with AWD.  Not just AWD either, but a selectable AWD that you can put in "Front Wheel", "Auto" that will changed to AWD automatically when needed and stay in Front Wheel when not needed, and "Lock" which keeps the AWD on for rough terrain... like our driveway... but will switch back to "Auto" at 37mph so you don't accidentally leave the Lock on when it isn't needed.

Despite not having the shiftless automatic (not until 2010 at least) and considerably less mpg that my Justy had, it is probably the closest to matching the style and capabilities of a 4-door 4wd Justy.

And of course... it is just darn cute!

I didn't get to play with it much since hubby got home with it well after dark last night, but here is a few too-dark pictures... I will take more this weekend when it isn't so dark.

Hopefully it will run as good as it is cute.