Arielle and I were kicking around the idea of trading in my VW Passat and her Toyota Corolla so we wanted to take a look at a Honda Civic. We didn’t plan to buy anything and told our salesperson this. He takes us out and we start looking at a couple 2006 cars. So Arielle asks, “Do you have an used Civic Hybrids?” To this our sales person laughs saying, “Yeah, right. People don’t trade in those.” We look around some more and see an 06 model in the back. Turns out it’s a hybrid and was traded in that day. The 3 of us are shocked, most of all John, our salesman. We take it for a test drive then start to talk numbers. At first the numbers just don’t work and we’re about to get up and leave, but they want to see what they can do. They come back with more value for our trades and knock another $2000 of the price. Now the numbers work and we buy the car.

It’s been an adjustment going from 2 cars to 1 but we’re working it out. Arielle walks to work which helps and our monthly spending on gas has been cut in half, even with the price climbing every week.

We haven’t started handing out awareness citations yet, so I think there’s hope for us.