Brits, generally speaking, plan further ahead than I do. It’s August, and we just got an email offering us a discount on this year’s Christmas Tree.
No joke.
As a result, despite having gone through the effort of getting my driving license a couple years back, we nearly never hire a car. We’ll wake up, think “it might be a nice day to go somewhere,” and discover that there are no available rental cars unless we want to start the journey by trekking to the other side of London.
I’d been trying to solve this for a while without success, and finally decided to give in and buy a car. Turns out there aren’t too many car dealers in central London, and that means the time honored American tradition of wandering between a bunch of dealerships to look at and test-drive cars isn’t really done here.
Buying a car involves (you’re probably way ahead of me) some planning.
One Saturday afternoon, a couple weeks ago, we wandered over to the BMW/Mini dealer at the edge of Hyde Park, thinking we’d have a look at a couple possibilities. We discovered that (a) they expect you to have an appointment and (b) they don’t keep any used inventory on-site. One of the sales staff was between appointments and free to chat with us briefly, so we talked about what they had in used inventory, looked at new versions of a few of those things, but it was not – all in all – a terribly useful visit.
Oh, and it turns out most car dealers are closed on Sundays. Maybe there was a rule that forbade buying horses on a Sunday, or maybe they just like the day of rest more than they like money.
At any rate, I spent some time on-line and found a few interesting cars in different parts of the country, but I wasn’t willing to travel several hours to probably not buy something. I eventually found a couple candidates relatively close by – “only” a little over an hour away in East London. I emailed the dealerships to arrange to come out the next weekend, but by the time the weekend had arrived both cars I was interested in had been sold.
Back to the proverbial drawing board…
When I found another candidate, I wasted no time. It turns out that if you give the dealer a couple hundred pounds, they’d hold a car for you for a few days. And if you decide it isn’t the right car, they’ll happily give those pounds back. So I handed them some money and blocked out time to go see the car in a couple days.
I was after something with a sunroof, since I couldn’t justify buying a convertible without having a garage, and had found a late model VW Golf that looked good on paper. We had a look, took a test drive, and talked to the dealer about the particulars, ultimately deciding it fit the bill nicely. We signed the paperwork and planned to take delivery on the coming Saturday, after a final inspection and detailing.
Saturday morning we took the train to the dealership in West Hampstead, did the last bits of paperwork, and drove away in our “new” car.
Since we were already most of the way there, our first stop was IKEA, and then Costco where, for the first time since moving here, we could buy heavy things (like wine) without needing to carry our purchases home on the Tube in a backpack.
The next morning we took a drive through and out of London to the south east, meeting up with friends at Bateman’s – the former home of Rudyard Kipling. After a visit to the house and gardens, and a bite of lunch, they went home and Dawnise and I made a stop at Scotney Castle en route back to London.
Along with the actual purchase I had to sort out insurance – more expensive as I’ve only been licensed for 3 years, and have no prior UK insurance. Oh, and get a resident parking permit. And pay the “road tax” (registration). And register for congestion charging – just in case we have cause to drive into the congestion zone.
So now we have a car, and I expect we’ll find places to wander that were formerly inaccessible, or inconvenient, by train. Being accustomed to mass transit basically always being slower and less convenient than a car I have to remember to check, and not assume.
I look forward to the day when we think “maybe we should sell the car, we don’t drive it very often.” Until then, I look forward to having spontaneous access to more places outside London.