The Girl Is Mine
The Doggone Girl Is Mine
I Know She's Mine
Because The Doggone Girl Is Mine
The Girl Is Mine - Michael Jackson
I just put the last payment check in the mail. And as soon as it's cashed and credited to my car loan account, bringing the balance down to zero, then Nugget is mine. All mine!
What a ride (pun intended) it's been...
I got Nugget because I needed to quickly replace the Buick which, as I tell the tale here, met with disaster one cloudbursting day in rural Geneva (not Switzerland...Florida).
She wasn't my first choice, I let the Saturn salesman talk me into her. But with my then horrible credit (it's now a bit improved, thanks in part to this loan) I was easily persuaded. Plus she looked nice (on the outside...I still consider her cheap plastic interior fixtures and stain-prone upholstery sub-par for a 2007) and drove smoothly.
She still looks as new as the day she rolled off the assembly line on the outside (when I deem to get her properly washed and waxed that is, but even between washings she maintains a nice shine). On the now-rare occasions Ric gets in her as a passenger, he remarks how she still has a "new car smell" but since I drive her everyday, I've long ago lost any detection of that on my part.
I worked hard and sometimes sweated it out but I was never late on a single payment throughout these two years. Only two years? Yup. It was apportioned at a standard 3-year rate but I opted out of the overtly expensive and in my opinion worthless sucker options of extended warranty insurance and some other crap add-on that the disreputable credit manager at Saturn (who soon-thereafter mysteriously left her position) pressured me to get "otherwise my loan approval might not go through".
Such threats like that, I later found out, are illegal. When I called the dealership manager out on it, the options were cancelled and the almost $1500 extra debt eliminated. This made payoff of the loan much quicker.
So here I am, Nugget and me. The loan on her and the lien through the probably mob-run lending agency that specializes in bad credit cases...paid off. Her title should be in my hands in a few weeks.
The Saturn dealership where I bought Nugget...gone. Now just an empty building emulating several other former dealerships along 17-92 between Casselberry and Longwood. Victims of this recession. And probably a little bit of their own shenanigans. Remember the Nitrogen Gas scam they offered me? Shit like that in a wary economy equals business death.
As a tribute to my new fully-self-owned property, I present to you a picture of her...
Taken from space!
That's right! On a recent look-see around the 'hood in Google Maps, I noticed they updated the satellite image from the last time I'd checked. Sure enough the caption states it was taken this year sometime. And lo and behold, you can see, in my driveway, Nugget, sitting under the sunny Florida skies, unaware that her photo was being snapped by a camera positioned far, far above, in orbit.
From the stage of the construction work being done on the property to the right and the dried-out patches of lawn, I estimate this to be from around January/February or so. With no job to go to then, I'm likely in the house, drinking, on the computer. Perhaps I'm checking out Google Maps and looking at the then current satellite image of my house, taken while no car was in the drive. Eerie, huh?
The Doggone Girl Is Mine
I Know She's Mine
Because The Doggone Girl Is Mine
The Girl Is Mine - Michael Jackson
I just put the last payment check in the mail. And as soon as it's cashed and credited to my car loan account, bringing the balance down to zero, then Nugget is mine. All mine!
What a ride (pun intended) it's been...
I got Nugget because I needed to quickly replace the Buick which, as I tell the tale here, met with disaster one cloudbursting day in rural Geneva (not Switzerland...Florida).
She wasn't my first choice, I let the Saturn salesman talk me into her. But with my then horrible credit (it's now a bit improved, thanks in part to this loan) I was easily persuaded. Plus she looked nice (on the outside...I still consider her cheap plastic interior fixtures and stain-prone upholstery sub-par for a 2007) and drove smoothly.
She still looks as new as the day she rolled off the assembly line on the outside (when I deem to get her properly washed and waxed that is, but even between washings she maintains a nice shine). On the now-rare occasions Ric gets in her as a passenger, he remarks how she still has a "new car smell" but since I drive her everyday, I've long ago lost any detection of that on my part.
I worked hard and sometimes sweated it out but I was never late on a single payment throughout these two years. Only two years? Yup. It was apportioned at a standard 3-year rate but I opted out of the overtly expensive and in my opinion worthless sucker options of extended warranty insurance and some other crap add-on that the disreputable credit manager at Saturn (who soon-thereafter mysteriously left her position) pressured me to get "otherwise my loan approval might not go through".
Such threats like that, I later found out, are illegal. When I called the dealership manager out on it, the options were cancelled and the almost $1500 extra debt eliminated. This made payoff of the loan much quicker.
So here I am, Nugget and me. The loan on her and the lien through the probably mob-run lending agency that specializes in bad credit cases...paid off. Her title should be in my hands in a few weeks.
The Saturn dealership where I bought Nugget...gone. Now just an empty building emulating several other former dealerships along 17-92 between Casselberry and Longwood. Victims of this recession. And probably a little bit of their own shenanigans. Remember the Nitrogen Gas scam they offered me? Shit like that in a wary economy equals business death.
As a tribute to my new fully-self-owned property, I present to you a picture of her...
Taken from space!
From the stage of the construction work being done on the property to the right and the dried-out patches of lawn, I estimate this to be from around January/February or so. With no job to go to then, I'm likely in the house, drinking, on the computer. Perhaps I'm checking out Google Maps and looking at the then current satellite image of my house, taken while no car was in the drive. Eerie, huh?