Thursday, September 19, 2019

Buying a Used Car


Six years ago in March of 2013, my wife Diana and I bought a used car, a Lexus LS460. Once we reached home with it I wrote a diary to record the process of our buying this used car. This bookkeeping-like diary of mine holds extraordinary meaning to me, because it was my maiden work, the beginning of all my writing, written in Chinese back when I was dying of stage IV kidney cancer. These past few years, I’d never considered that I might write a continuation of my car-buying adventures, because I’d always considered my unforgettable experience of six years ago to be the last time my wife and I would ever be able to buy one together.

But this August, when the tumors in my body all made a re-appearance, Diana and I were prompted by the sudden impulse to do something which surprised even ourselves: We went to buy another used car! Our shopping experience was all-around even more theatrical than the time six years ago, and so I was unable to resist picking up my pen to write this new article.

Our motivation for buying a car this time wasn’t because anything had happened to our last one. Our 9-year-old Lexus is still working perfectly, and has never given us any sort of problems. Add to that the fact that we rarely drive anywhere aside from visiting the hospital or buying groceries, our car at the time only had 80,000 miles on it, and was still in the “prime of its life”, so to speak—it hadn’t changed much in the six years since we’d bought it, and we could keep driving it for many years to come.

Our reason for buying a car this time arose from our son Mark’s 2003 Lexus LS350. This 16-year-old, 200,000-mile car was constantly showing malfunctions. When Mark graduated from medical school this past May, we’d had a discussion with him, suggesting he buy a used car that was maybe around three years old. We told him we could help with the down payment for the car, and for the rest he could borrow a loan from the bank. But Mark politely turned down our offer, saying that the loans for his four years of medical school had already put him in huge debt, and he didn’t want to add any more to that. According to him, this old 2003 car just needed a little fixing up, and it’d be able to get by for another two or three years.

So this June, before Mark went off to work at the UNLV School of Medicine, we spent $2,000 on maintenance for the old car, changed out its cylinders, and made it able to start running again (this car’s market value is probably only a few thousand itself). Because the car was too old, Mark wouldn’t let us fix up any of the unnecessary little problems, saying it wasn’t worth spending any more money on repairing the thing.

Near the end of June, Mark drove off to Las Vegas, Nevada, to start his new resident job. This was a day worth commemorating - the day he began his independent life. Watching him load his suitcases into the car, everything prepared nice and neatly, we two old folks stepped out the front door to give him goodbye hugs at the entrance; we understood, deep down, that once he left it would be very difficult for us to see him again as often as we used to, because America’s resident doctors are incredibly busy, needing to work even during holidays, and rarely ever finding the time to take a break and go home. We watched him back the car down the driveway, fix its direction, then step on the gas—it was at this moment that a black board fell from the bottom of the car, letting out an ear-piercing noise as it scraped against the ground. Diana immediately rushed over, gesticulating wildly at Mark to get him to stop the car. After Mark got out, the two of them both went underneath the car in an attempt to locate the source of the problem.

It turns out that what fell from the upper half of the chassis was the engine splash shield. This protective cover had actually fallen off once a long time ago; according to proper procedure, we should have taken the car to a Lexus dealer’s repair center, and let professional mechanics change it out for a new splash shield. But we hadn’t thought this old car was worth the cost of sending it to a Lexus dealer for repairs, and decided to do some home repairs instead—we’d used tape to stick the splash shield back onto the car’s chassis. It was clear now that the tape wasn’t strong enough to handle the car’s jolting, and had all come loose.

I stood at a distance, watching as Mark pulled spare tape from the car and, together with Diana under the blazing Southern California sun, spent a tremendous amount of effort underneath the car taping that splash shield back onto the chassis. I couldn’t help getting worried as I watched: What if, during Mark’s five-hour drive to Las Vegas, this tape fell off again?

One day in July, a guest from Qingdao named Mr. Fang Liu came to visit me, together with his teenage son. As I chatted with this fellow Qingdao countryman I was meeting for the first time, I casually brought up the worry I felt over Mark’s old car. Half-jokingly, I commented that it was really unbelievable how thrifty my medical school graduate of a son could be, insisting on driving such an old hunk of junk to work. In truth, this car had a lot of other little issues as well: For example, the right side-view mirror was broken in that it could no longer be adjusted, so we’d taped that in place as well. Another problem was that three of the car’s four doors were broken, particularly the right side - they’d creak loudly every time you opened them, making you worry that they might fall right off at any moment. Aside from that, the front-right door couldn’t be opened from the outside, a fact which made things particularly inconvenient for our Doctor Chang, who’s currently dating a beautiful girl studying in a dental school. Just imagine: Doctor Chang drives over to pick his girlfriend up for a date, only to be entirely unable to perform that gentlemanly action of opening the door and helping get her seated, and has to leave the poor girl standing alone on the curb while he goes around and climbs in through the driver’s side to push the door open from inside. That would be pretty embarrassingly awkward, wouldn’t it?

When I told the guest from Qingdao the story of Mark and his car, it was no more than an attempt at finding a casual topic to talk about; I didn’t have any particular goal behind it, nor did I hope for any suggestions from him. But to my surprise, after hearing this story, Mr. Liu immediately turned to his teenage son with a stern look on his face and said: “Did you hear that? This man’s son finished medical school and is working as a resident doctor, yet he’s still driving an almost 20-year-old car. Then here you’re just a high school student and you’re already trying to get your dad to buy you a new car for college. We need to learn to follow Dr. Chang’s example!” Mr. Liu’s reaction was far beyond anything I’d expected.

Speaking of Mark stubbornly refusing to replace the old car, his main reason for it was that he felt his student loans from four years of medical school had already put him in deep enough debt, plus American resident doctors do not have particularly high pay, so it would be another three years before he can finish his residency and gain the financial ability to start paying it back. Until then, his student loans will continue to accumulate interests, and will grow to be even greater; he does not want to add another liability to the pile.

Mark’s first job in residency began in July, in the intensive care unit of the hospital’s ER ward. The kind of patients one finds in an intensive care unit are all people toeing the line between life and death; this is a department with heavy responsibilities, whose residents are incredibly busy. Because he was a novice in this department, Mark began getting up early and coming home late to better get himself into working form, his average work day stretching as long as 12-16 hours. Sometimes when things got busy, he didn’t have any time to eat a single meal all day. Hearing how difficult his job was, and knowing there was no way for us two old folks to help him, all we could do was sit at home and quietly pray to our Heavenly Father, so that He may grant him the strength and wisdom to succeed in a position with such heavy responsibilities. We rarely even had the courage to call him on the phone, afraid we might interrupt what little free time he had to sleep in his otherwise hectic work day. He rarely called us either, during this time, so we could only ever get news about him from the short messages he’d occasionally post on Facebook.

However, in the last week of July, we received an unexpected phone call from him. Over the phone, he told us that his old car had suddenly broken down on the way to work, and after being towed to a nearby repair shop, it was discovered that the alternator had broken. He was now waiting for a colleague to come pick him up to take him to the hospital. Mark’s phone call led the two of us to wonder if maybe letting him drive off in that old car hadn’t been the smartest choice. This aged car with its constantly occurring mechanical problems didn’t seem capable of keeping up with the frenetic work pace of a resident doctor working a 12-to-16-hour daily schedule.

What finally completely destroyed what remaining faith we had in the car was at the end of July, when Mark drove home from Las Vegas to take part in a friend’s wedding. When he got out of the car, I saw him pull out a tattered black plate; it turned out the engine plash shield had fallen off yet again. As I stared at the unbelievably damaged shield in his hands, a wave of pity towards Mark washed over me. Although I didn’t ask for the details of his breakdown this time, I could imagine him stopping the car by the side of the road, in that barren and empty desert wasteland that stretches between Nevada and California, laying on the burning hot ground beneath a blazing hot sun to check on an engine splash shield that had fallen due to loose tape...this was really too unsafe. But Mark didn’t seem to think it was a big problem at all; he told us that if he drove it to a Lexus dealer and changed out the shield it would cost him $400, whereas he could buy a shield online for about $30 and ask a nearby repair shop to install it, thus saving him $300.


That night Diana and I came to a consensus: During Mark’s time as an overworked and busy resident doctor, he shouldn’t be using what little energy he has left to keep fixing this car. We decided to give our 9-year-old Lexus LS 460 to him, and we could go out to buy ourselves a new used car with not too many years on it.

Finding used cars online is one of my specialties. These past years, from my three children learning to drive in high school, to buying their own cars after graduating college, the cars they got were all used cars I found online myself. Over time, some of my friends have heard about my car-buying experience, and often ask me to help them find good-quality, affordable used cars for them. This time was no exception: On July 31st, I only needed the one day’s time to set my sights on a used car I’d found through Carfax. Carfax is a website focused on providing information on used cars in North America - with its enormous database, it’s known to have access to twenty billion records from more than 100,000 sources, including motor vehicle departments for all 50 US states and all 10 Canadian provinces. What leaves me the greatest impression is the vehicle history report this site provides, which gives a detailed record of each car’s manufacture date, maintenance record, whether or not it’s been in an accident, how many miles it has at present, and a lot of other important information. This site’s founder, Ewin Barnet III, originally created this database in opposition to the many used car lots full of cars with falsified miles, a move which was highly welcomed by consumers.

What I found on this website was a used car of the same make as the one I’d bought six years ago, a Lexus LS 460; this 2015 car had only run 26,000 miles, and yet the price was half that of a new car. Its vehicle history report included a complete maintenance, which didn’t show records of any sort of accidents.

The next morning, on August 1st, I used the phone number provided on Carfax to call the seller, hoping to ask whether this car was still up for sale. The dealership representative who answered my call was Romio Gorgis, an employee with noticeable salesmanship skills; he told me that someone from out-of-state already had interest in this car (I’m not sure if this was true or not), but if I came to their dealership today, he could guarantee that my purchase would take priority. He also said that this car had no margin for haggling - it had to go out at the listed price of $42,000 (this was true). I told him over the phone that we didn’t have this much cash available off-hand, and that aside from our bank savings and what last-minute money we could borrow off our credit card, we’d have to go to Credit Union Bank and ask for a car loan; we’d have to wait until the bank approved our loan before we could look at the car. I checked the map to find that this dealership was situated in the western end of San Diego close to the border of Mexico, a 2-hour drive away. Driving such a long way just to look at a car we couldn’t yet afford certainly wouldn’t be a very wise decision. But Romio offered an attractive suggestion: If my credit score was good, he said, then even if the bank had yet to approve my loan, I would still be able to take the car home today.

Romio’s suggestion sounded very attractive, and so Diana and I decided to drive down to the dealership to look at the car. As we were on our way out the door, we pulled Mark along into the car with us. But Mark was at a loss as to our impulsive decision; he didn’t understand why we would want to go through the trouble of borrowing loans to buy another car again when we were aging and riddled with illness, or rush into it so quickly like a troop heading into battle. There was no way for us to explain it clearly to him at the time, either - we simply implored him to help act as our driver, because this dealership was too far from our home.

Mark drove for over two hours before finally bringing us to our destination. The moment we got out of the car, we saw Romio already standing by the entrance of the building, waiting to welcome us. He enthusiastically led us to a room with an automatic coffee machine in it, inviting us to rest a while and drink some coffee. We were told he’d already brought out the car we were interested in and parked it outside the hall.

The moment I set eyes on this shiny white Lexus model, she had me hooked. Although this car was also a Lexus LS460, she wasn’t anything like the LS460 we’d bought six years ago; this was an F Sport model sports car. The first impression I got from her was that of an art piece brimming over with inspiration. The fenders on both sides had the distinctive “F SPORT” label engraved in them, showcasing the car’s special status as a sports model. The contours of her body were designed in a dynamic, flowing style, outlining the still-graceful curves of her novelty and fashion.

Romio invited the three of us to sit inside the car for a test drive, with Diana driving, Romio in the front passenger seat, and Mark and me sitting in the back. Diana drove very carefully as she listened to Romio explain different details about the car’s interior, particularly the central console’s complicated electronic system, with its navigation, radio, multimedia, phone, system settings, air conditioning, and other functions. I wasn’t listening to the details of their conversation, because even if I did put effort into listening, I knew I wouldn’t be able to understand all this new technology. The only thing I could understand was when Romio said this Lexus F Sport model sports car was a rare find in the used car market, because most owners of this sport car model would keep it for many years.


 I quietly sat in the spacious and cozy back seat. The seats were covered in real leather, and supported the body very well. The car’s inner decor and design were rather conservative compared to its extravagant exterior, giving it a cozy, comfortable atmosphere I enjoyed.

Once we’d finished the test drive, Romio led us to the dealership’s financial department, where we were received by a young finance manager who’d only just begun working this year. After exchanging handshakes and greetings, this young man got straight to the point, and said to me: “I’ve checked your credit report, and you have the highest credit score I’ve seen.”

“What is my credit score?” I curiously asked him. Having been stuck convalescing at home for so long, I hadn’t bothered checking my own credit report in years.

“Your credit score is 837, almost 850, which is really incredibly rare - only 10% of consumers can manage to get a credit score that high.”

“Then can I take the car home with me today?” I asked, half-joking.

“Of course you can, your credit is amazing! I’ll get the contract written up right now, and once you’ve signed it you can take the car home. But remember, you have to have the bank loan ready within a week.”

I could barely believe my ears - I’d lived in America for almost 40 years, but this was the first time I’d been able to take home a car from a car dealer before ever getting a bank loan. Before we left the dealership, in order to commemorate this extraordinary car-buying experience, we took a photo together with Romio.



In the dealership parking lot, I gave Mark the key of our 9-year-old Lexus LS460, saying: “From now on, you’re going to be the owner of this car. Thank you for coming with us today - if you weren’t willing to come, Mom and I would have had to drive these two cars home separately.”

Mark seemed still not to have recovered from the lightning-quick decision we had made today; he took the key from my hand, then sincerely said: “Thank you, both of you, but I don’t think I deserve to have a car this nice.” I thought to myself, it looks like this frugal son of mine still needs some time to completely forget that old car.



On the way home, I sat in the front-right seat of the new used sports car, watching as Diana uncharacteristically drove at high speed down the freeway. Because this was a sports car, it could go from 0 to 60 mph in a span of only six seconds. It seemed Diana wanted to test this ability, racing down the freeway at top speed, sometimes even getting up to 100 mph. Seeing all the cars that got left behind in our dust, the two of us felt a great sense of rejuvenation.

Afterwards Diana explained to me that she actually hadn’t realized how fast she was going; because this car was situated lower than the average automobile, making people feel closer to the ground and giving a greater sense of motion, it was very easy to excite the driver into wanting to drive faster. Aside from that, this particular sports car had an electronically-controlled adaptive variable air suspension system, which lowered the center of gravitational force, decreased the jolting you’d get from high-speed driving, and improved the car’s stability and agility, all of which combined to cause Diana to push it up to 100 mph and still have us feeling like the ride was as smooth as ever.

The next day, August 2nd, I joyfully uploaded a few pictures from our dealership experience onto social media Wechat. Many of my friends expressed their congratulations, all agreeing that I’d bought a good quality used car at a real bargain. But my old friend Chen from Shandong Province left a very curious message. This is what he wrote: “Can someone at your age still take out loans in America? Here in China it’s impossible.”

I immediately started talking with Chen, asking why people my age were unable to get bank loans in China. His reply was that China’s banks had no trust in the repayment ability of people 65 and up. He went on to say: “We can’t even get a home equity loan against our house, let alone consumer goods like cars…”

Chen’s words were a stark reminder which got me worrying about whether my car loan might suffer the same fate of rejection as the elderly people of China did. After all, I was an old retiree and, even worse, a late-stage cancer patient. Would the bank feel at ease loaning money to a sick old man like me, who could go off to see the Lord at any moment?

I quickly called up the bank’s loan department. A female staff member answered the phone; I sent her copies of the car’s sales contract, as well as the Lexus finance manager’s contact information, then told her that I’d only been given a week to obtain the loan and hoped that she could approve my loan application as quickly as possible. She told me that, because my credit score was very high, I could get the best interest rate of 2.7%, and that the process could be completed in only two days.

After hanging up the phone, I let out a deep sigh of relief - it looks like American banks only focus on debtors’ credit history when it comes to judging their ability and willingness to repay, not on other factors such as my life expectancy as a cancer patient. My guess is that this is due to Western civilization’s overwhelming belief in spirit of contract. Because my credit score is extremely high, the bank’s loan department had no doubt whatsoever in my trustworthiness; even if they knew I was an old man, a man who could lose my life to cancer at any moment, they still approved my loan without the slightest hesitation.

The Bible says: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (Thessalonians 5:16-18) These past few days Diana and I have been overflowing with thanksgiving. We give thanks to the Lord, for giving us a humble and grateful son who is not obsessed with materialism; we give thanks to the Lord, for letting us do what little we can as parents in giving Mark our old car, and letting him focus his energy on his sacred duty as a resident doctor helping people in need; we give thanks to the Lord, for keeping my heart full of joy even on the sixth cancer recurrence; we give thanks to the Lord, for allowing the two of us to feel rejuvenated again, driving a sports car fast as a wild whirlwind  down the freeway…



Originally written in Chinese by Joseph Chang on Aug 22, 2019
Translated to English by Ida von Mizaner on Sept. 12, 2019
Edited by Joseph Chang on Sept 19, 2019



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