Black Betty vs The Blue Hag

Tommy was obsessed with my Jeep. Like OB-sessed. He would always say, "Ne ride in da Deep!!" or "Ne dwive da Deep!" He liked to look at it, touch it, drive it, ride in it....you get the idea. But then The Blue Hag (my non-affectionate nick name for my Jeep) took a turn for the worse. I broke down on the side of the road and I. was. DONE. 

I'd been getting really frustrated in general with The Blue Hag and I was only getting 16 mpg. SIXTEEN. When they sold it to us, we got told it was 25 mpg. I figured it would be a LITTLE bit less than they said, but not 9 mpg less. I was filling up every 4 days at $65 a tank. Yuck. After we bought it and I had driven it for a few days, I wanted to take it back. And we should've! We had 7 days to return it at no cost and I was thiiiiiiiiis close (imagine my fingers being held up really close together). But I decided not to. I liked having an SUV just because I thought it was the cool thing to have and we were having a baby, so I assumed there would be more room. Wrong.

But here's the kicker. The day we bought it, I was at work and Nick had gotten off early, so he went car shopping. He called me and told me to come out to the front of my office because he had found something he really liked and wanted me to see it. I told the girls I worked with that if it was blue, I was not going to drive it. And it was blue. And we bought it. I HATE blue cars. WHY then did I buy it, you ask? No clue.

And here's the 2nd kicker--when we bought it from Davis Moore, they told us they did a 101 point inspection. Okay, that's awesome. Everything had been checked out so we thought we were good to go because we were buying this vehicle used. We take it in 3 weeks after we buy it for an oil change and they call and tell us there's over $1000 worth the work they found on it that needs to be done. Excuse me?!? We had purchased it less than a month ago. I asked them why that stuff wasn't found in their "101 point inspection." Their answer?.........wait for it.............it was found. But they only fix things they find wrong if it's vital to the life of the vehicle!! What the?!?! WHAT???? And the "extended bumper to bumper warranty" we had bought from them didn't cover any of the repairs. I was FURIOUS. What kind of dealership does that? Knowingly sells a vehicle that needs $1000 worth the work WITHOUT reporting it to the buyer and then tries to get them to spend that money at their dealership to have it fixed? SO rediculous. Since that happened, I've had a vendetta against Jeep liberty's and Davis Moore.

But I digress. After The Blue Hag started crapping out on me over and over again, we decided to go car shopping. We were debating buying new or used (but leaning towards new since I'm sure Davis Moore isn't the only dealership that does crappy stuf like that). We test drove a Suzuki but found out they were going out of business and decided against it. If you're car shopping in Wichita, don't go to Rusty Eck Ford. We had taken the Suzuki for the weekend and went to Ford while we were test driving it (isn't that horrible?! :). We had driven straight from Suzuki to Ford and when we left Rusty Eck Ford to go home, the price tag from the Suzuki had been taken off the window and put over our liscense plate and there was a HUGE scratch in the side that had NOT been there when we pulled off the Suzuki parking lot. Somebody at Rusty Eck had to have done that because we were the only customers there (it was late in the evening) and there were about 15 salesmen standing around when we pulled up and when we left.

So we went to Ford of Augusta! Who I am now in love with. We had the nicest salesman ever (Tyler) and had quick and easy service. We ended up walking away with a 2013 Ford Focus named Black Betty. It's black (in case you didn't pick up on that). We traded in The Blue Hag and got more than I thought we EVER would for it. Black Betty gets THIRTY mpg. I still fill up every 4-5 days but am spending half the amount on gas that I was before. The payment is a little higher (of course) but the gas evens it out and our insurance went down by $30 a month, so that evens out too. And there's just as much room because our Jeep, although an "SUV," was still super tiny inside. The trunk was huge, but the leg room wasn't much.

Things I LOVE about my Focus--the Sync phone system (hands free and nobody has a problem hearing or understanding me), the buttons on the steering wheel so I can adjust the radio settings and do stuff on the phone without taking my hands off the wheel, the digital displays, the system checks (if you run a system check, it tells you if it detects anything wrong in the way your car is running), of course, the gas mileage. But the best thing is something that I don't yet have a need for but wish SO badly I did because I think it's amazing. You can program your keys to only allow the vehicle to do certain things. For example, if I gave Tommy a key, I could program that key to only allow the car to go 70 MPH or to not start until his seatbelt was buckled or to not run while the radio is on, etc. Wouldn't that be awesome?!? I thought about programming Nick's key to only allow the vehicle to go 40MPH but figured at some point he would retaliate :) Overall, I am SO happy with our new car!

Tommy's had a few withdrawals from The Blue Hag and still asks, "Where da Deep go?" and says that he wants to drive it. But I, for one, could not be happier that she's plaguing someone elses family with high gas bills and broken car parts. So the moral of the story is, don't buy blue cars, don't shop at Davis Moore or Rusty Eck Ford and do NOT go against your gut when buying a vehicle!!

Bye-bye Blue Hag!! Good riddance!