Here is my story on how to get that beachy smell:
So we are driving down the road headed to dinner and I’m sitting super low in his nice shiny Bimmer(did i forget to mention his baby is a BMW). So he’s like you can raise your seat up. So me being one who loves to play with buttons raises my seat. Then I lower my seat, and raise my seat, and lower my seat again. Then my help with the beachy smell commences. We hear a SSSSSssssss sound. My air vent was closed so I thought maybe that was where the sound was coming from. No. Shane is like it’s coming from your purse. No. Then he is like, “what is that smell?” Perfume? No. So then I’m like, “is something going to blow up on me”? I put my feet in the seat. All the time laughing(me saying over and over, “I’m sorry I know how much you love your car”) and trying to find this smell and noise while he is driving. Then we find it! He stops at a stop light and a can of sunblock rolls out from under the seat. I seemed to have punctured it when playing with the seat. OOoops! So this can is spraying sunblock all over the floor of his car. I try kicking it back under the seat. It’s spraying up my dress all over my legs. We are still both laughing so hard. FINALLY he pulls over and the can has already stopped spraying. He has like two napkins to clean this mess up with. And yes we are still laughing about it. I look under the seat and not much there. I say, “good thing you have a mat under there”. UMmmm No! “That’s a speaker”, Shane says. Ooops again! After the two napkins have been used and can tossed we set out looking for a carwash. We find one and I give him 5 bucks to clean it up. Now some of you may be like you gave him $5 to clean his own car or you ONLY gave him $5 to clean up your mess. Well I have offered to help him pay to get it cleaned (now hurry up Shane and get that done mister!), but he won’t accept. And you guys know what?!?! He still took me to get ice cream!

In my time here DealTaker has nearly doubled the number of full-time employees and we have become part of the Media General family. Also in that same time-frame I have seen the economy go from good in 2007 to bad in 2008 to worse in 2009. Then there was the presidential election where we as a country decided that it was ‘time for a change’ and elected our new president Barack Obama.

About the time when Media General made the decision that they would acquire DealTaker I made the decision it was time for me to treat myself. I decided I was going to begin looking at houses and cars and make a decision on one or the other. My first inclination was to buy a house so that I could stop paying rent and at least retain some of the money I was spending on housing expenses.  After much research I found that the housing market was experiencing a slump and it looked like things were going to get much worse before they got better.

So I set off on my search to find a newer car. I started looking at a new Nissan Rogue and used, low mileage, BMW 5-series initially. I had previously owned a 1986 BMW 528e, not unlike the one pictured, and loved the car which prompted my initial look at the 5-series. Not to mention the 4-year 50,000 mile no-cost maintenance program. What drew me to the Rogue was that it had what Nissan calls “Intelligent Key” which allows you unlock and start the car without taking the key out of your pocket.

On a whim I decided to drop by the BMW dealership around the corner from the office and look at the used car inventory. When the salesman asked what kind of car I was looking for I said that I wasn’t really sure which model and eliminated the colors red, black, white and silver for various reasons. After all that we ended up with blue in the end, which happens to be my favorite color.

After looking around the lot for a little while we came across a 2007 335i that had been used as a loaner car for the dealership. I wasn’t too sure about the car at that point so I decided we would take it for a test drive. The salesman told me to pop it in to sport and have a little fun. I did and whoa, was it zippy. On that test drive I found out that, that little car was really a beast waiting to be unleashed. I fell in love with the car and decided that it was going to be my next driving machine.

The best part of the whole deal was that it was a Certified Pre-Owned received an 8-year/100,000 mile warranty on the car. Additionally I got the standard 4-year/50,000 mile ‘Ultimate Service’ which covers all standard service costs, minus any standard ware and tare items (e.g. tires).

All-in-all I saved money off retail price on the car, got a free extended warranty and all of my service is completely covered. I have to say, for my first car purchase I think I made out better than the dealership.