Although we have not gone down that far again, it has still remained pretty cold lately and we have had snow although not as much as usual. One day we had freezing rain which was horrible. These are photos of the car after driving 75km in it.

Ice rain

Yesterday we had snow and heavy winds which caused havoc on the roads and made for a very slow journey home. Whilst sitting watching TV last night it was snowing outside but we also has thunder and lightening. How weird is that?

Because of the ice and snow I have been using the Tuscan to drive in as it is better in these conditions than our new Veloster. It is a shame as since we got it we have only done 1300km. I’m sure it will make up for it during the summer.

We were looking at the possibility of getting a second car as I was now travelling to Kingston every day and so we put this one on the list. I had already narrowed the search down to a Ford Fiesta, Mazda 2, Toyota Yaris or Honda Fit. Chris did not like the Toyota or Honda, so we ruled them out. The Mazda did not appear as nice as the Ford, so we had really come to the conclusion that the Fiesta was the best, but now we added the Veloster.

We went to the local dealership and they had one which we took for a test drive. It was really nice and it made up our decision to buy this car. They told us they were expecting an orange one in soon, so we got them to call us when it arrived so that we could see this colour in person. They did so and I really liked the colour, but Chris wasn’t so sure, so e decided to go with the Triathlon Grey which we both liked. Unfortunately the model they had was not the spec we wanted so we would have to order one.

The saga of this process is too long and boring for you readers so I won’t go into detail, but it was not a happy period. However, eventually after much stress our Veloster, in grey finally arrived mid December.

So far we love it. It is full of gadgets and you can activate pretty much everything through voice commands. It has a keyless entry and a push button start which is really cool. Here are some pics Chris took.

I phoned the local dealership just to check that this was indeed the case and that the offer applied to leased vehicles and they confirmed that yes we could take advantage of the offer too. We made an appointment to pop in and discuss the options available. As we had not thought of a new car we hadn’t done any research on newer vehicles, so off to the internet we went.

We had no problems with the Santa Fe, but thought that perhaps we could get away with a smaller vehicle. We have a very long driveway that gets very deep in snow and we needed a vehicle that could cope with that so decided to stick with an SUV. That led us to the Tuscan.

It looked very nice on the website and it was a completely new design so would not look too old in a year or so. The Santa Fe is really due a new look, so the chances of getting a new one of those and then it being replaced next year or so was high. At least with the Tuscan we would get a new model.

We went into the dealership with all our original paperwork and they offered us a test drive in the Tuscan. We went out in a red one which had a brown interior that we did not like, but we did like the layout of of the interior. We also like the exterior very much. We decided after half hour drive that we would be very happy with the Tuscan as it offered all the things we like about the Santa Fe, but a bit smaller – I could actually put groceries in the back without having to climb in as it wasn’t as deep – yeah!

We drove back to the dealer and took a look at the models available. We wanted the GLS model with AWD and had a choice of several colours and much to our shock both chose the bronze. This was a colour we had dismissed from the brochure online as it didn’t look very nice, but in the flesh it looked much better. Also the interior was black which we loved.

Next we had to discuss the money side of things. We wanted to purchase this time rather than lease, so knew we might end up paying more per month, but they came up with an excellent deal which actually cost us less – that’s what I like to hear!

So we did the deal and are now owners of a brand new Hyundai Tuscan. Although we have only had it a couple of days we are very pleased with it so far. It is very comfortable, more so than the old car and it has an iPod connection which is a great bonus for me.

Here are some pics. The exterior ones are stock photos as it has been too damn cold to stand outside taking photos of it. But it is exactly the same as our model.

On a completely disjointed note, we have just spotted a chipmunk under the tree collecting nuts. Didn’t think we would see one of those again until April!

We ordered it last week and the process of going to the dealer, test driving and saying yes we will have one was so easy and straight forward we were worried it would all collapse around us, so I decided not to temp fate by mentioning it here. Now we actually have the car (or should I say SUV) I can relax and finally come clean.

I cannot stress how easy everything was to arrange. We thought the process of buying our original Ford Sport Trac was easy as we did that whilst still in the UK – mainly by phone and email, but this was just as easy.

We simply went in said we wanted it, they checked our credit history and said okay, sign here. They did not ask for proof of income, employment etc, Presumably because we were already paying a lease to Ford they took it we were okay for them.

So on Friday morning we took back our Ford, removed the plates, signed a form and then Ford allowed us to use their courtesy car to get a lift to the Hyundai garage up the road. We then signed a couple more forms, looked around the Santa Fe to check everything, attached the plates and off we went.

We had to go to Kingston, so our first rip was a decent drive and it is a very nice vehicle. So far we are very pleased with it. Here are some pics.

And inside

This car should be much cheaper to run as the service intervals are slightly longer 6k as opposed to 5k and the service costs appear lower than Ford. So far the fuel is looking much better and as the fuel tank is smaller the actual cost of filling up will be less – so psychologically better too. We were having to pay over $100 to fill up the truck lately.

On a sad note – not boo hoo sad, but really sad – here are the stats for our old vehicle. Bare in mind we had it almost exactly two years.

We spent 973 hours driving it

We did 64,750 km

We used 8,525 litres of fuel

No I did not keep a record of this – the car did it for us!

On another note, we have decided that we will probably get rid of our car now and lease a car for a few months. That way we can reduce our existing payments, get rid of the hassle of having to sell the car at the same time as moving etc and lease one to keep us going for the remaining months. We will also have the flexibility of just being able to hand it back when we need to.

Just looking into the options at the moment and tomorrow we are taking our car to the Audi dealer to get it valued.