AN AUTOMATIC CAR!!!
It’s a Renault Super 5 with only 70,000 KM on it. It’s an ’86, but it’s in great condition and oh so clean! We had to go to Chalon-sur-Saône (200 km north of here) to buy it, but it was so worth it!!!
I didn’t mention finding this car online before because I was afraid I would jinx it or it would turn out to not be an automatic car after all. You wouldn’t believe how many times I found an automatic car that I wanted to buy, only to find out the seller had made a mistake in the ad and it was really a manual. FIVE TIMES. So if you are looking to buy an automatic car, do not trust online ads. Unless boîte auto or automatique is written in the title, then it’s not really an automatic, and the person was too lazy to proofread the ad before hitting submit.
And since I dread anything to do with banking in this country, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get a chèque de banque (cashier’s check) even though I had enough money in my account. We needed to leave by 11 this morning, so we thought that arriving at the bank at 9 would give us enough time. Except the person helping us was new and didn’t know how to do cashier’s checks. And then the bank didn’t have any more cashier’s checks on hand (seriously!), so they had to get special authorization to go into the vault to find them or something equally ridiculous. We decided to leave while they searched for this piece of paper, and had a nice chocolat chaud and croissant downtown. Luckily for me, they had found the cashier’s checks by the time we returned and we were able to get everything done just in time to leave for Chalon.
David called Direct Assurance before our return to Annecy and got everything settled in 10 minutes. My insurance should be 38 € a month and it will decrease each year that I am insured in France. And the cost of the carte grise (registration) shouldn’t be too bad either since the car is older than 10 years and it’s only 5 CV. I have one month to buy my carte grise and then I need to change the plaque d’immatriculation (license plate) since it came from a different département. But that’s it.
The 2 hour drive home was fine and not as stressful as I thought it would be. Everything worked out fine today and I’m still having a hard time believing it. I’m no longer a slave to Ebay or Priceminister, searching for automatics every single day… I have my own car in France and I am finally independent again! I am going to drive myself to work tomorrow and I couldn’t be happier. I may have spent a lot of money today, but I certainly don’t regret it.
