A Singaporean In Australia

After 2 weeks of aggressive hunting, especially in the last 3 days, we have our final 2 candidates. When I reveal the last 2 shortlisted cars, it may probably be an anti-climax.  But believe me, it wasn't easy, especially with our limited budget and the difficulties getting around our own transport (fortunately, friends assisted)

We went through hundreds of cars, tested more than several and clocked more than 200km running from dealers to dealers. There was many duds in the market, however good they seemed to look on the websites. We test driven cars which rattles, cars without the air conditioners, cars which creaked like doors, cars with engines which could wake a suburb up if we drove past.

On the internet it would be easy to compare and say which is the better choice. That would be an armchair expert. It's a different experience on the ground, what you see was not going to be what you were getting. The fun thing however, was that there was a large variety of cars of all shapes and sizes to wow about. There were times I felt tempted to buy something irrelevant, to satisfy my boy-craze, as such one of these:

It could be mine for $6k, but no, we ain't getting that

The last 2 candidates that made the grade finally were:

1) 1995 Toyota Corolla Seca, Mileage: 213k, Cost: $3650.
2) 2002 Daihatsu Cuore, Mileage: 173k, Cost: $2700.

Decision making would be tomorrow morning, we are expecting last minute changes though.