Kuala Lumpur April 2025 "New car"
01/06/25 23:41
Our car is more than 25 years old and is in working order. It is a Toyota Harrier and belongs to my wife and is as old as the car I used to drive when in the UK. However it does cost money to keep it going. In the last year alone we have had to replace the alternator, the battery, the complete front suspension and then the complete rear suspension. This was followed by an engine change when some metal was found in the sump during an oil change. I suspect that would have been terminal for a car of its age in the UK but in Malaysia getting a garage to fit a reconditioned engine is both easy and cost effective. Nevertheless we have spent over $20,000 Ringgit (almost £5,000) on repairs in the last year so when the gear box started to fail my wife decided we had to replace it. I let her choose what its replacement should be and her spec came back as another Toyota Harrier, 7/8 years old and white in colour.
As soon as her relatives found out we were looking for a new car they immediately wanted to find it for her. Her family own a car dealership in Ipoh and have a lot of contacts in the business so it was natural that they would want to help. However their efforts came to nothing and what they could find didn't come close to what my wife wanted. It was at this point she used a search engine (yea, Google) to see what it could find and there at the top of the page was a Toyota Harrier, almost 8 years old, white in colour, exactly at the price we wanted to pay and located only 10km from where we live. It seemed too good to be true and my wife wanted to immediately go and have a look at it! Well we coaxed our old car (with the failing gear box) into action and made our way over to the car dealer arriving there thirty minutes before it closed for the day. He had between thirty and forty cars for sale but only one was a Harrier and it was the only white car. It shone like a beacon in the centre of his lot. I walked round it looking for defects like the minor dents and scrapes our car had picked up over the years but there were none, it was in immaculate condition with 85,000km on the clock. There was no need for a discussion, my wife went into the office and arranged to buy it.
There are a number of reasons this makes a car purchase a blog entry and here they are.
1) Our family of professionals can't find one but my wife finds it immediately.
2) It exactly matches her desired specification in type, age, colour and price.
3) The car registration number. It has a lot of 5s in it and those numbers that are not five add up to five. All the numbers added together equal the number of the house we are moving back to and five has a special Biblical meaning. It is God's number of grace and perhaps (or probably) by his divine grace my wife has been given this car.
Her old car had served her well for twenty years and she gave it away to a Church Pastor who needed a car and was willing to pay for the gear box repairs. It should serve him well for another few years.
As soon as her relatives found out we were looking for a new car they immediately wanted to find it for her. Her family own a car dealership in Ipoh and have a lot of contacts in the business so it was natural that they would want to help. However their efforts came to nothing and what they could find didn't come close to what my wife wanted. It was at this point she used a search engine (yea, Google) to see what it could find and there at the top of the page was a Toyota Harrier, almost 8 years old, white in colour, exactly at the price we wanted to pay and located only 10km from where we live. It seemed too good to be true and my wife wanted to immediately go and have a look at it! Well we coaxed our old car (with the failing gear box) into action and made our way over to the car dealer arriving there thirty minutes before it closed for the day. He had between thirty and forty cars for sale but only one was a Harrier and it was the only white car. It shone like a beacon in the centre of his lot. I walked round it looking for defects like the minor dents and scrapes our car had picked up over the years but there were none, it was in immaculate condition with 85,000km on the clock. There was no need for a discussion, my wife went into the office and arranged to buy it.
There are a number of reasons this makes a car purchase a blog entry and here they are.
1) Our family of professionals can't find one but my wife finds it immediately.
2) It exactly matches her desired specification in type, age, colour and price.
3) The car registration number. It has a lot of 5s in it and those numbers that are not five add up to five. All the numbers added together equal the number of the house we are moving back to and five has a special Biblical meaning. It is God's number of grace and perhaps (or probably) by his divine grace my wife has been given this car.
Her old car had served her well for twenty years and she gave it away to a Church Pastor who needed a car and was willing to pay for the gear box repairs. It should serve him well for another few years.