Thursday, December 18, 2008

Changing of the Guard Continues - Part 2. End of an Era


We sold our Cruiser yesterday. Just in time for Christmas. In fact, just in time to ruin our Christmas holiday, more than likely.
It's Murphy's Law isn't it? We advertised it in the Trading Post online several weeks ago, with the hope that it would be bought by people wanting to go offroad for their Christmas holidays. Plenty of time for it to sell and for us to find and buy a dual cab 4WD ute as our replacement vehicle, so that we could still go away at Christmas. After all, my Mazda 323, great little car that it is, has no towbar and not a whole lot of room for camping gear, either! It certainly isn't going to handle driving on the beach. We'll have to come up with some alternate plans. (Normally we don't go away over the Christmas/New Year period, but Steve actually has holidays from Christmas Eve until the 5th of January.)
Naturally, for the first few weeks the online ad attracted no calls at all from potential buyers. The only guy to phone us up was actually trying to phone about the one listed above it in the online Trading Post, and phoned our number by mistake. Steve left it parked down on the main road with a sign in the windscreen and had a couple of queries, but nothing concrete.
So, just when we figured we'd remove the ad and wait until after Christmas (and until there weren't quite as many other Cruisers being advertised - ours was one of about 25 of the same model and year!), thereby still retaining a vehicle to use for the Christmas break, Steve got a call from a couple who were after a Cruiser.
They came to look at it yesterday morning, took it for a test drive and were very happy with it. So happy in fact, that they came back yesterday afternoon with the bank cheque! They are from the Northern Territory and are headed back up there at the end of the week. They apparently only came to Brisbane to visit family and buy another Cruiser!
Now we have just under a week until Christmas. Maybe if the cheque clears quickly, we might even manage to find a new car by then... as if we didn't already have enough to do!
On a side note, my brother says (tongue-in-cheek) that no longer owning a Cruiser means I will need to relinquish my "Cruisergirl" avatars and email address, but I disagree. The way I figure it, having owned five in a row must surely entitle me to "life membership" of that nickname, as it were...

3 comments:

Brenda said...

Man, what a PITA!! I mean great that it's sold and all but, geez, the time sure does suck.
Good luck, I hope you have a new car by Christmas:)

Sharyn said...

Oh that just sucks. Have you had any luck getting a replacement yet?
Have a great xmas either way!

Elli said...

We've found a replacement, an '04 dual cab Hilux. Bought without a test drive from the auctions, so hopefully it passes a road worthy (fingers crossed) and we can get it registered when we pick it up Monday 30th.