So, more on the car. We are used to the usual kind of automatic transmission, but the new ones have a CVT, which doesn't have gears and shift when you drive it, though there are controls on the steering wheel (called a paddle) that will let you "shift gears," i.e., keep the car from naturally going at the rate it thinks proper and letting you decide.
I read some bad things about this new kind of transmission, but it seems that most of the problems were with belt-type ones, Nissan in particular, and this year and on, Subaru put a sturdier chain instead of a belt.
Our local repair place said they only saw 2 problems, and in those cases, the car owners had taken their cars to the local Jiffy Lube and had the transmission fluid changed, and the dopes drained the fluid but forgot to put new fluid in! I understand the CVTs need a different kind of fluid, and the usual transmission fluid will ruin them, so I warned Bill to make sure to mention that any time he wants the car worked on.
We looked at and test-drove an Impreza, a cheaper model, but Bill said it gave him a bad feeling. Still, that little car, though feeling more tinny, had one of those touch screens that I've been curious about. When you put the car into reverse, it shows a picture of where you are backing up, but the picture is a little deceptive, and Bill backed closer to a neighboring parked car than it showed on the screen, so I don't know whether those screens can be trusted.
Anyway, Bill's car doesn't have a screen, but I was hoping it would be better, because I'd like that in the next car I get. Maybe they'll improve by the time I'm ready to give up my own Subaru, a 2008, which is still going fine. I don't put on a lot of miles, while Bill puts on lots of miles, which is why his car, a year newer, needed to go. It was starting to need too many repairs, and there comes a point where that money could be spent on a newer car, rather than on fixing an older car.
Knowing how well Bill maintains his car, a coworker wanted to buy it, and originally, the dealer where we were buying the new car gave us a pitifully low trade-in value on the old one. When we mentioned that we could sell it privately for so much more, they upped the trade-in value. I feel they were trying to steal from us when they thought they had us, which doesn't make me happy about this dealership.