By Kyle Roberts
“Life is a mosaic of small details.” — Socrates, probably
Vehicles have never really been my thing.
I see them as only a means of getting from Point A to Point B, which is why I’ve only ever driven bland makes and models: a Ford Taurus, a Mitsubishi Galant, a Mercury Milan — you get the idea.
Since my fifteenth birthday, I have always only ever owned used cars. A total of six sedans over the years and nothing to write about.
Well, okay — I’ll write about the sixth one.
For starters, Judith and I have an informal policy with our vehicles: unless something mechanical fails, we drive our cars/SUVs to 200,000 miles. No exceptions.
So far, it’s served us well. When we replace one, we look for a “new-to-us” car that has less than 50,000 miles and the cycle repeats.
In the summer of 2018, it was time for the black Milan to go to pasture. Heated seating, nice interior, moon roof, navigation system — it had some sweet bells and whistles. But we hit the vaunted 200,000-mile mark and I was due for this particular upgrade.
Talking with some former co-workers over lunch, one of them had told me about buying a car online.
“It’s magical,” he said. “You buy the car for the lowest possible price, and they’ll deliver to you for a nominal fee.”
I’m always one for an adventure, so I figured why not. Now defunct, I used a subsite for Vroom.com and found a car for a terrific price (too terrific, as we’ll get to soon) and started the process.
It took seven days from start to finish for a big-rig to pull my 2015 silver Ford Fiesta into the Temple Baptist Church parking lot. I had promised my then-five-year-old that she could be the first one to ride with me, and she was ecstatic.
After the driver asked me to look around the exterior to make sure everything was up to snuff, I opened the driver’s door, wide-eyed with excitement.
Everything looked great inside. I immediately started looking for how to connect my phone’s Bluetooth to the media play. It may not have the heated seats and moonroof from my previous car, but it was exactly what I wanted.
“Crank ‘er up,” the truck driver told me. “Make sure everything runs good.”
I inserted the key to crank the engine. Click. Nothing. I try again. Click. The radio is on, so it’s clearly not a battery issue.
Maybe it’s not in park, I think to myself. I check the shifter.
Huh, that looks different. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and R.
I look down. There’s a third pedal to the left of the brake.
My heart falls through the floor. It’s a manual stick shift. Apparently, I’m sitting in the only Ford Fiesta in history that’s a standard.
I roll the window down, and Judith sees my pale face.
“It’s a stick shift,” I managed to get out in squeaks. “Keep Alice in your car — I’ve got to figure out what to do from here.”
I talk to the truck driver again.
“This may not be the right car,” I tell him, wishing into the great void that this was a clerical error.
Incredibly kind, he checks the paperwork. “Nope, this is it. If this is not what you want, it will be $500 for me to take it back.”
I call the company next. Staying as calm as possible, I plead my case.
“Could you please make sure this is the correct car?”
Turns out, it was. When I found the car on the website, it was in plain English: “Standard Package.” Standard to me meant cloth seats, no butt warmers, and limited digital connectivity.
Not a standard.
Luckily for me, I was trained as a youngster on my dad’s Ford F-150, and my time riding 4-wheelers helped me figure out how to shift with a clutch. So in stubbornness, I spent an entire weekend re-teaching myself to drive a stick shift in order to keep the car. Stalling out plenty of times in the process, it finally all clicked together a few weeks later, even as my kindergartener asked me in the drop off line if I was sure I knew “how to drive this car.”
I still have the car today. It’s symbolic to me of learning a very valuable lesson moving forward: always check the details. Standard to one is stick-shift to another. And when you spend thousands of dollars on something, you want it to be as close to what you had in mind when it arrives or when you drive it off the lot.
Sometimes, I still rush things. Sometimes, I still make quick decisions. I’m not perfect — but if the Fiesta experience has taught me one thing — it’s to make sure to try to gather as much information as possible before making a decision. Overall, I think it’s proven effective.
But you can bet I’ll be going to Karl Malone Toyota in-person the next time I need a car.
