We bought a car!
And if you’ll forgive my snobby Ameri-centric world outlook, yes, its a weird small euro-israeli car. Our first idea before we left the US was to bring our honda odyssey minivan with us. But after doing some research we decided that it would be easier and either cheaper or similar in price to buy something locally. And I had heard that you could get a Kia Carnival (Kia Sedona in the US), which is very similar, in Israel.
Once here, we first went to a new car dealer here and discussed our needs. It turns out the Kias are possible but very hard to find and very expensive and the market for resale is not as good. They showed us other cars similar to the Mitsubishi Outlander we were renting (and paying a fortune for, like whenever you come to Israel as a tourist and rent a car), but most of them had a way-too-small third row and absolutely no cargo space when the third row was up. He finally mentioned the Peugot 5008 which he said had a bit more room in the back and is very popular here. Some turkish celebrity showed up driving one and now everyone wants one, and he can’t keep them in stock. But he didn’t have one to show us.
The next day while waiting at the misrad haklita we talked to a random guy who agreed that the peugeot was good and said that there is a dealer just a few blocks from here. So we walked over to see the car at the dealer and to check the back seats. The dealer, as it turns out, was a combined Peugot/Citroen dealer. And when we looked at the Peugot, the back seat in fact had no room and was also way-too-small. But then he showed us the similar car from Citroen, the Citroen C4 Picasso, which actually had a bit more leg room in the way back. But it was also very expensive new.
So we went to a used car dealer chain recommended to us by a friend, where we negotiated a 2015 Citroen C4 Picasso from Haifa, which they drove down to Ra’anana for us. We test drove it and drove it to a mechanic recommended to us by the dealer to have a “pre-buy inspection,” which is the common practice here. And yes, we had utterly given up on the idea of having any cargo space with the rear seats up. However, we could put three kids in the back/middle row, only one in the way-back, and have one way-back seat folded down flat for more decent cargo room. It only had a few “issues” which Trade-Mobile, the used car dealer, fixed for us. Plus, we had them add the backup camera and nav unit to the console (which actually adds Waze built into the car which accesses the internet through your cell phone; pretty cool)
Epilogue: two days later, after driving it all over town, we looked at each other and said, “I bet we need car insurance.” So after a few calls to some friends we now have car insurance as well. Which I assume covers what we need because the whole policy is in hebrew. I’m sure its fine, kol b’seder…
