Minivan Momma

Even though we bought our minivan back at the beginning of March, I'm still in love with it enough to blog about it finally in May. When Steve's truck died and we decided to shop for a minivan, we realized that Steve and I really have not had to buy a vehicle together before (I leased the Alero before we were married and then we decided to buy it when the lease was up, so that's the closest we came to going through the dealership process) and Steve's truck came from his Dad, so yeah, we were feeling kind of lost on how exactly to go about buying a minivan. We looked on KSL, stopped at a dealership or two, but didn't really feel like we were getting anywhere (one "dealership" looked like an old taco stand and the lady insisted we could talk to the manager about "this and that" and said the title was clean when we pointed out the van had looked like it had been in an accident. Yeah, we pretty much ran from that place).

Our saving grace came when my Dad found a website of a dealership he liked by the name of Henry Clay Motors. We decided to check it out. And pretty much bought the first van we test drove because we liked the price, the non-oiliness of the sales guy and the general vibe of the place. Also, right after we showed up, a bunch of other families came by looking for minivans and we certainly wanted the one minivan out of the 4 there with built in carseats! Plus, from start to finish, the whole buying process took about an hour and a half. Can't beat that!

So I was happy we had a great buying experience and I totally recommend anyone looking for a car to check out Henry Clay Motors. It was started by 2 brothers who both bought used cars a few years ago at the same time and who both had a horrible experience with it. They figured, why does it have to be that way? We can do better than this! So, after working out the details over a few years, they started their own dealership. One brother has a master's degree in accounting so he does all the loans and stuff, and the other brother is a mechanical engineer and he pretty much does everything else. The brother we worked with at the dealership was the mechanical engineer and he said the place had been open about a year and he only just quit his mechanical engineering job to run the dealership full time. But he wants people to have a positive enough experience there that they'll tell their friends and their business will grow by word of mouth. I liked their story, so there's your free advertising guys!

With my 2007 Dodge Caravan and my third child on the way and a haircut I got a little while ago, I feel like my transformation into the typical Utah Mom is complete! And I know a lot of people have bad childhood memories of their family minivan, but with it only being my sister and I growing up, we never had a minivan. So, no such stigma is attached to a minivan for me, I just love the extra space and the built in carseats and everything. Hopefully we are a minivan family from now on!