Chips Ahoy, writer Jeremy Freed's 2013 Kia Rio.Jeremy Freed/The Globe and Mail
“I think you will be very happy with this car,” said David, the guy who sold me my first vehicle on a sweltering day this past July. Six months, several visits to a mechanic and a cross-country drive later, I can think of a few more accurate adjectives to describe my feelings towards Chips Ahoy, my 2013 Kia Rio.
When my wife and I decided to leave Toronto this summer for the East Coast, we joined countless other urbanites fleeing the crowded, pandemic-pummelled city for the promise of a better lifestyle and lower costs of living. In addition to packing up our lives, pricing cross-country movers and finding somewhere to live in Nova Scotia, we also needed a car.
Thinking myself somewhat knowledgeable in that area – I’ve never owned a car before, but as an occasional car reviewer, I’ve driven enough of them to know the basics – I assigned myself the job of picking out our wheels. My wife gave me her blessing to undertake the mission, with a pair of caveats – nothing manual and nothing red.
While we were certainly privileged to be able to afford a car of any kind, our budget was limited, so I approached the process with as much dispassionate reason as I could muster. This car would be a simple means to an end – the most versatile and reliable transportation for the least amount of money.
My options in the less-than-$5,000 range turned out to be surprisingly varied: ‘90s BMWs, ‘80s Mercedes-Benzes and at least one slightly tattered Saab 900 convertible, but I swore I would not succumb to the temptations of fashion or frivolity. Armed with this steadfastness, a public-transit card and access to Consumer Reports through the Toronto Public Library, I set out to find the car of my (aggressively realistic) dreams.
After weeks of Kijiji alerts and transit rides to far-flung corners of the city, I arrived at my silver Rio on one of the hottest days ever recorded in Toronto. In its favour, it had a spotless interior, working air conditioning and was only seven years old. It had more mileage than I wanted – 165,000 km – and a big scrape across the rear quarter panel, but the owner seemed nice, and he was motivated to sell.
In hindsight, there were a couple of red flags. For one thing, the owner had installed stick-on racing stripes and a set of wheels (from a Mini Cooper) that he had spray-painted black. The car had snow tires on the front and all-seasons on the rear, and blue LED lights in the footwells.
David also didn’t have a used-vehicle information package (listing present and previous owners, odometer readings, lien information and, crucially, whether the car was salvaged or failed its safety inspection), which sellers are legally required to provide to a buyer, and I didn’t remember to request a vehicle-history report of my own, which is easily done online. It was unbearably hot, and I was tired of riding transit to the suburbs in search of a cheap used car, so I decided to go for it.
Initially, I was excited with my purchase, but that excitement proved short-lived. Mechanically, Chips Ahoy – “chips” for my wife’s favourite snack and “ahoy” because it sounded appropriately maritime-y – turned out to be mostly fine, but the process of getting the car inspected and registered revealed some troubling surprises. The driver’s-side window switch was broken, the steering wheel controls for audio, Bluetooth and cruise control didn’t work and someone had disconnected the knock sensor (possibly to cover up evidence of a mysterious recurring engine rattle).
Most troublingly, however, I also discovered there was a lien on the car. After contacting David about this, he assured me that the debt on the vehicle had been paid (and sent me a blurry photo of an ATM receipt to prove it), but aside from asking him nicely to share the official documentation, there wasn’t much else I could do. If David was lying about the lien and he stopped making his payments, the bank could repossess the car at any time. And if he had been lying about that, what else had he been hiding? As my imagination ran wild, my anxiety mounted.
Thankfully, we made it to Nova Scotia without trouble, and six months later, Chips Ahoy has neither broken down nor been repossessed, but “happy” is not a word I’d associate with the purchase. I am, however, happy with the view of the ocean from our rented cottage, and our decision to leave the city – neither of which would have been possible without a car. So maybe I am happy with Chips Ahoy after all. Is it the car of my dreams? Definitely not, but that was never part of the plan.
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