hello! (sorry this post is so long, i'm just excited, you don't have to read it all, but i felt like sharing my story)
my name is kt, i'm a 19 year old college sophmore at savannah college of art and design, where i'm studying graphic design. as of yesterday i'm am also the owner a mega-awesome honda civic hybrid! it's a used 2005 (it's only 4 months old, but already has 9,000 miles on it, it still looks brand new inside & out) cvt, grey and grey. it's so perfect, exactly what i was looking/hoping/dreaming for, i feel REALLY lucky to have it.

i go to school out of state and i come home often because my boyfriend is going to school close to home. my parents wanted me to have something newer/more reliable than my old car, a 1995 honda civic (it has about 170k miles on it) and it will be going to my younger sister, who will be driving in march. the car was also going to be a birthday present, my birthday was 3 days ago. at first i wanted an insight, my mom works for the health department and they have one, it was a manual and i don't really know how to drive it, but my mom was nice enough to let me drive it around the block with her a few times. i liked the idea of getting such good gas mileage, but the insight is so small, it's not really very practical. then i got it in my head that i wanted a diesel vw golf, but we never found one, and the gas golf i drove had really bad pick up, which kinda truned me off. my mom found a 2003 hybrid civic with 41k miles that i took for a test drive, i liked it, but i wasn't head over heels... i felt like i needed to drive it more, and it wasn't the color i wanted, and my boyfriend got me a little reluctant to have a car starting with a lot of miles on it, not that 41k is terribly high... but it's certainly more than 0. it also made a noise that sounded like police cars with their sirens on when i put on the brakes. the intrior was really nice, and felt like a new car to me, and the tiny spoiler on the back lessened my distaste for the taillights that the 2001-2005 civic sedans have. it got me thinking about the hybrid civics more seriously, i started to wonder if a hybrid would be a bad investment, with a hybrid the technology changes a lot more year to year, and i was also worried about the battery replacement cost, and how both of those things would effect the resale value. plus it seems to be known that the savings on gas money won't pay for the extra cost of getting a hybrid in the first place. then i was on edmunds and discovered TCO (true cost to own) i compared a 2003 hybrid civic to a 2003 lx civic sedan, over 5 years the regular civic cost only $800 less than the hybrid version, even though the price of the civic started out at $4,100 less. the hybrid started to look like a better deal. a few days ago my mom had found a used 2005 civic hybrid on autotrader, grey (the color i wanted) cvt (the transmission i needed), but it didn't have a price. she figured it'd be less than the new ones which were selling in the 20k area. then yesterday she saw an ad in the newspaper for the same car, advertised at $16,995!!! nearly the same price as the 2003 we had looked at! i got super excited and was jumping all over the place. and demanded we leave to see it/hopefully buy it right away. we went to the dealership and didn't see the car in the lot, a salesman walked over and greeted us, we told him we saw an ad for a civic hybrid, and much to my delight he said it was in the lot next door (we had pulled into the the bmw section, but it had been traded in for an audi). he asked how much it had be advertised for, because there was no price on the car. we told him 16,9 and he said he had remembered seeing 18,9 in the window earlier. i wanted to take it for a test drive so he went to get the keys to move some other cars that were blocking it in, and make a copy of my license. he came back out with a photocopy that looked exactly like the ad we found except it listed the civic at 20,9! yikes! the ad we saw in the paper was wrong, but they told us they would sell it to us for that price (16,995) without any negotiations. we took it for a test drive and it was beautiful, perfect, wonderful. better than the 2003 i drove before, no siren noise, the color i wanted, practically brand new, there was no doubt in my mind. it was such a really great deal, i don't know what i'd do if we hadn't taken it. while we were there another person called about it. and today my mom got a call asking how we were liking and and they said the got 6 other people asking about it yesterday. i feel really lucky, i must have really done something right. everyone loves it, my boyfriend got a 2005 brand new toyota corolla in december for his birthday, now he's jealous of me because i've got a hybrid. i can't stop grinning, people must think i'm crazy. i'm so so happy. one of my friends said he hated me, and i told him i'd hate me too. my new hch is fabulous! i've named it fuel shy (a lyric from alien ant farm's ss recognize). i love my car!!!!!!!

 

Glad to hear that you love the car. Welcome to Greenhybrid.
Oh... and I think you have about tied for the longest introduction.

 

Congratulations KT!!

The dealership where I got my Prius had two used ones on the lot selling for about the same price as a *brand new* one, so I'd say you got your HCH for an amazing price! Good job!!

Rick

 

I'd like to know who the ****fool was who unloaded that HCH after only 4 months!

One of my previous cars was a Civic as well. An '84 hatchback, which I traded in back in '92 at ~175K miles for a '90 Corolla, which I traded in this spring at ~320K miles for my new HCH.

 

Good Job KT on the "lucky" sales price. You must have caught the dealer on a slow day !! Anyway, I hope you love your car in a year as much as you do right now....I know I still love mine just as much, and with gas prices going up Up UP I feel like "we smart people" are going to suffer far less than Bubba SUV in the months and years ahead.

Welcome to GH.com !!!

 

Nice car, and nice price! It should be less expensive to operate than 99% of all the cars out there and is pretty cool at the same time. With gas projected to stay above $2 a gallon next year, your car probably won't even depreciate on you for a good while.

 

Hey, congratulations on your HCH! Glad to see so much excitement an so many more proud owners.

Is your commute south near Jax? I've got a few friends taking classes at Savannah College of A&D that still drive the 2 hours back here instead of committing to the smaller town.

 

i'm from down in south florida, it's a 8 hour drive to savannah, so there is no way i could commute, i live in the dorms. i try to go home and visit about once amonth though, and when i do i go through jax.