'I always thought a Rogue was a pipe dream'

With gas prices on the rise, and the Silverado's value only headed south, Kristi and I set out to see how we could trade in what she affectionately called Bear.

With all of the recent job changes, Kristi ended up driving the truck daily, and it just wasn't practical to drive while wearing heels. Let's be honest, here.

So we landed at Gwinnett Place Nissan in Duluth, supposedly the largest volume Nissan dealer in the Southeast.

She test drove the 2008 Rogue, and loved it from the start. It's built on a car line, so it's smoother and lower to the ground than trucks or other SUVs. It also gets about 24 miles per gallon around town, which isn't a huge deal since her commute is 2.5 miles.

What surprised me was the amount of negotiating we did for the Silverado. They started out offering us $13,500 for it, then went to $15,300. After we were still about $2,000 apart on what we were offering, the sales manager went into a classic speal about miles per gallon.

Him: "What do you get around town? About 16?

Me: "Yeah, about that. But when you buy a truck, you're not expecting 35 mpg."

We went back and forth a couple more times, and he ultimately put the truck at $17,100.

(The next day I went back to give them the title to the truck, and the salesman talked about wanting us to come back and trade-in the Hyundai there. He mentioned he only made $100 commission on the deal, and the dealership hardly made anything. Who knows if any of that is true. But I can tell you it will be difficult to sell the truck for much more than $17,100.)

Kristi loved driving it off the lot, and after she parked at Steak 'n Shake, she said, "Man, that was a lot easier than the truck." Then she repeated about the same line when we pulled out of the parking lot.

As we drove toward Athens, we recalled our on-again-off-again car/truck search of the last year. Mostly, we had focused on four-door hatchbacks and trucks, thinking the SUVs were a bit out of our price range. Fortunately, the truck held its value enough to give us a mulligan on the purchase.

"I always thought a Rogue was a pipe dream," she said.