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Next car-shopping question: can I fit the bass into a 4-door Mazda 626? Wheee. Have I mentioned lately just how much I hate car shopping?
I thought I'd hit the jackpot when I saw a Volvo wagon for sale in my price range, but it turned out to be a "project or for parts" type of ad. I've thought I wanted a Volvo wagon (probably a 740) since the mid-1980s. But apparently my looking for a Volvo station wagon I can afford is about as useful as my wishing for a Lamborghini. As slowly as Volvos seem to age, it seems they depreciate even more slowly.
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I'm a bit nervous about buying vehicles at state/county auctions, but the idea of hiring a mechanic to come along and advise does help with that ... Hmm. Time for me to see what folks like that charge around here, or whether any of my Much More Car Enclued friends are willing to go hit an auction with me.
There'll also be the matter of dealing with the state inspection, but with someone who can steer me away from the cars with problems in that regard, the inspection just becomes an added step to deal with instead of a potential landmine.
[Maryland auto inspections are not periodic safety inspections as they are in many other places; they're a "try to convince people to buy from dealers instead of each other" hurdle, and are only required when the vehicle is bought or sold. So you can buy a passing vehicle and drive it for ten years accumulating serious safety issues, and unless you lose a headlight the car will still be legal. But when buying a car there are all sorts of uber-nitpicky things that can cause it to flunk the inspection, some of which seem like legitimate safety issues and some of which don't. If I'm seriously interested in a car that doesn't have a recent inspection certificate, I want to be able to get it inspected (by an authorized inspection station) before buying it so I'll know how much more it'll cost me to make it legal. And it's unusual for even a really nice-seeming car to pass on the first try. Another consequence is that even buying a car from just across the border in DE/PA/WV/VA/DC is an extra level of headache for a Marylander.]
Good Car Dealership
It might be worth a visit to see if they've hired another honest salesperson...
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i am strongly in favor of Mazdas; they're very reliable cars.
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The way I got it into the Accord was to fold the rear seat down, remove the front passenger seat headrest, put the instrument in through the right rear door neck-first pointing over the driver's seat, then rotate it (trying not to whack the rear-view mirror, which I wound up doing anyhow about 25% of the time) so that the headstock was over the passenger seat and the tailpin was a few inches into the trunk. It didn't quite fit with the rear seat up.
When I borrowed a slightly larger bass, I had to open the driver's door first, diagonally opposite the door I put the bass in through. So yeah, it's going to be a matter of door dimensions as well as internal dimensions, but even with all those numbers I'll need to either test-fit the bass myself or hear from someone who has done so.
Ideally, I'll wind up with a cheap, uber-reliable, fuel-efficient station-wagon, five-door, or hatchback, at which point I'll be able to carry the bass and a passenger. But I'm not holding my breath.
(The bass does fit into a Mazda 323 hatchback along with a driver and a passenger plus a [standard] poodle. Though there wasn't very much room left for the poodle.)
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Finding a good Volvo can be tricky, everyone thinks their car is worth a lot of money. I passed on a decent used one last year on eBay for $1000 because I wasn't quite ready to switch from my little sedan to a mini van or station wagon. Why was it reasonably cheap? It had salvaged title. The engine had seized & the previous owner/insurance company choose to junk it rather than replace it. Someone bought it and put a used but good engine in it.
Also, you need to look at what it costs for various different repairs to the vehicle. (A $1000 car that just has a slight coolant leak isn't such a deal when it turns out to be the radiator & they start at $500... plus labor...)
Janice