Buying this Navigator was a bit of a gamble.  

It was advertised as “run and drive” with only “normal wear” for a used car.  It was located in Des Moines, IA (5 hours from me) and I had won the bid sight unseen… let the adventure begin.

The plan was simple.  In preparation for the trip I would need to take a day off work, go to the bank to get a cashier’s check, print off the invoice, reserve a uhaul trailer, and load my tools and supplies into the Subaru. The potentially big hitch in this giddy-up was that I would be driving my 2005 Subaru wagon to retrieve the Navigator and would be relying on using the Navigator to tow the Subaru 311 miles back home.  A vehicle which I’ve never seen in person let alone driven.

I drove beautifully!  I picked up the Navigator, drove over to uhaul to snag the trailer, went back to Copart to load the Subaru.  Stopped off at AutoZone on my way out of town to grab a couple jugs of coolant and motor oil, just in case.  I’d checked all the fluid levels earlier but you never know?

I never had a single issue over the whole drive back.  70 mph up the hills and down the hills.  The Navigator pulled the 6,000lb. Subaru and trailer combination wonderfully, and still averaged 13.1 mpg. 

The vehicle was in pretty good condition overall.  I really only did minor things to it like: fluids, wiper blades, new tires, tpms sensors, had the rear lift gate paint touched up.

We used the Navigator as our family vehicle for about 15 months and put about 15,000 miles on it during that time.  All said and done, when we sold it we lost a total of $1,040.  To put that into perspective it would be like me leasing/renting the use of the vehicle for $70 a month.  I rent cars all the time for work and they cost $70 a day.  While I didn’t come out ahead on the Navigator I think I did a decent job of minimizing the loss and my family had use of a solid reliable vehicle for a year.

Deal done, onto the next one.