Originally Posted by bri1042
Every car purchase is a mistake. Or, at least, every purchase I have ever made certainly has been.
It doesn’t matter how much research or thought you put into a car purchase, something about the one you buy will be a mistake, or not be what you hoped it would be. You might get home, put the car away for the night, and then by first light of day you’ll realize that the color only looked good in the fading light of the evening and today it looks terrible. You might drive the car for months and eventually get to the point where you are completely used to every aspect of the car and you come to realize that the transmission choice was the wrong one for you, or that one feature you skipped you deeply miss.
Something will not be right.
If you have sufficient resources, and you do not mind wasting money, you can go back to the dealership and fix the mistake. You can buy the same care in silver instead of brown, manual instead of automatic, or go get something else entirely. You will leave thousands on the table, and your significant other may growl at you for months, but you have the option.
If you do not have sufficient resources, you are stuck. If you are not willing to lose that huge chunk of change even though you can afford it, you are stuck. If angering your favorite person is a worse idea than living with the issue, you are stuck. Depending on what the issue is, you may be able to go aftermarket and fix the problem. But probably not. You are stuck with a car that is not what you want it to be. It is probably the most expensive thing you own, other than your house (or rent payment).
Whatever your mistake is, you can be sure that there will be an argument on many internet forums about your mistake. You can lose yourself in those arguments, and they will make you feel better and/or worse about the mistake you made, depending on the moment. People will call you a moron for buying a brown car (brown is, after all, a terrible color for cars). You will be told you are not a real enthusiast because you did not get the silly wheel package, or you chose to have a sunroof. There is nothing you can do about this. The internet is what it is.
If you have a car enthusiast for a significant other, a lot of us will be jealous that you have someone in your life that might understand your willingness to lose thousands to correct your mistake. But the two of you will probably go broke, so perhaps the rest of us are wrong to be jealous. Hard to say.
If most of your friends are enthusiasts, they will understand why your mistake was such a big deal. They will commiserate with you and lament their own terrible mistakes. And you will drive your friend’s car and quietly congratulate yourself for making less mistakes than they did. Or realize that your friend made less mistakes than you did and then decide if you should trade in your car for a car like theirs. If you do, you may like your car more, but the whole thing may get really weird.
If few of your friends are enthusiasts, and your significant human is not an enthusiast, you are an island surrounded by a sea of people who already think you are utterly insane. Accept it. You will have almost no support for living with or fixing your mistake. If you are lucky enough to get a “do whatever makes you happy” response from your human, that is the best you are going to get. They will never actually understand why it made you happy. Life is compromise.
Whatever mistake you made, whatever mistakes I made, it is Sunday. Good weather or bad, go out and drive a bit today and enjoy your car for what it is, and try to forget what it is not. Have some fun today. Edit: But stay away from people, most of us are on lock-down.
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