On Tuesday we went to Car Sense, the local used car dealer, and got an idea of what was available in models. On Wednesday I pulled the wheel with the bad bearing and determined it was noisy but not dangerous and also decided I didn't want to go through the work and expense until we looked at new cars. At 13 years old with 146,000 miles and a laundry list of minor problems I didn't expect a bad bearing to have much affect on the trade-in value. As it turns out we got a better trade in than the blue book was giving for that car in excellent shape. On Friday we went to dealers looking at mid sized sedans and hybrids and narrowed our search to an Accord or a Camry with the Toyota in the lead. Saturday we test drove the Accord on the way to the Toyota dealer and started our normal process of adding options and upping the price. We hadn't stopped at the local Hyundai dealer on Friday so we stopped just to see what they had. Alesa fell in love with the Elantra (color, comfort, MPG and options) so we test drove it and the Sonata and they made us a good deal (Sam's Club) with a great trade-in, sight unseen since we were driving the truck. We then went over to the Toyota dealer but they started backing off their oiginal deal so we left there, did some internet research on Hyundai and headed back to the Elantra. We closed the deal and they gave us lunch and a years free maintenance (oil changes and tire rotations) and we drove the new car home on dealer plates. Their warranty is outstanding to include 20 year 200,000 mile power train and I spend half of what I was expecting to spend on a new vehicle. Today we took the Subaru in and transferred plates. It is great to have a reliable, comfortable and economical vehicle to travel in. We got 40 MPG on our trip to Mike's yesterday and enjoyed the bluetooth, ipod and XM options as well. Alesa's favorite color is now Desert Bronze.