Buyer's remorse

I'm having a lot of second and third thoughts about the new car.

I had been weighing the decision to buy a new car for about a year. I have a 2000 Chrysler minivan. It has only 86,000 miles on it, but I've taken such poor care of it that it runs as if it had 250,000 miles on it. I didn't feel I could trust it on a long drive.

So, I had been batting around a number of alternatives. One alternative was buying a second, smaller fuel-efficient car to augment the minivan, which I would keep for hauling stuff from Lowe's and The Home Depot and other 'dirty' chores. Among the cars I considered were the Toyota Yaris, the Mini Cooper, the Scion icebox car – whatever that's called, and the VW New Beetle.

Another alternative was unloading the minivan and buying a new one, and continuing to own only one vehicle.

Yet another alternative was just keeping the old minivan and doing nothing.

I had batted these possibilities around for month after month, until finally, last Tuesday, the transmission crapped out on the minivan. Fortunately, the thing was in the driveway when it suddenly went ka-WHUMP and refused to go forward anymore (although it will still back up).

'Enough putting this off,' I thought, and I called a friend to take me to a VW dealership just a couple of miles from my house. My credit union has a branch right across the street. So I told the salesman which car I wanted, went next door and got a cashier's check, and drove off the lot in a new 2009 VW Beetle.

Did I do the right thing? I don't know. It's a lot more fuel efficient than the minivan, but it gets the worst mileage of any of the small cars I considered. I drive less than 10 thousand miles a year, so I don't worry as much about gas mileage as do my friends who drive 30,000-60,000 miles.

The VW is also, from online reviews I've read, probably the most maintenance-intensive of the cars I considered. And there are no cheap fixes: even the water pump, made of plastic, costs about $1400 to replace.

Was this a wise decision? Should I have waited longer? Did I let ego drive me to buy a 'salsa red' Beetle that really stands out compared to my safe, sane white minivan? Will I regret buying a car with the New Beetle's reputation?

This car is a lot of fun to drive. But I feel like I'm just driving my ego around. And the Bedetle, being a Beetle, has that kind of 'toy car' feel its sixties predecessor had. (I drove a beat-up old used beetle in college, and I'm sure that nostalgia also affected my purchasing decision.)

I'm still going to try to get the minivan repaired. I'll try to get an estimate next week.