This is a green Subaru

We bought a car today.  Here it is:

It is not green.  It is not a Subaru.  It's a 1999 Daewoo Nubira (The Korean GM that went bankrupt and is now owned by GM).  But of course, there's a story.

One way to buy a used car in Iceland is to go online to the website bilasolur.is.  Note:  on Icelandic websites, there is usually an indication of what other languages the site has available along the header of the site, most often just indicated by a flag.  English is always denoted by the British flag.  This car sales website has more languages than I've seen on any other Icelandic website, so it is worth looking just for that purpose.

At any rate, here's how this works:  most of the cars for sale are being placed by current owners through car dealerships.  Most of them are not actually at the dealership, and most (we have learned) are being offered for more than the owner is actually willing to accept for them.  This latter part is not different from the U.S., but in the U.S. cars sold by dealerships are generally owned by the dealership.  Buying from private parties happens through e.g. Craigslist, or if you are old enough to have bought a car before the invention of Craigslist, through the classifieds.   This Icelandic way seems nicer, and more efficient, because you can deal with the dealership to arrange to see the car.  All of the paperwork happens very quickly, thanks to the Icelandic kennitala (national ID). You might not meet the owner.

But we are glad that we met the (now previous) owner of our new vehicle.  His name is Siggi, and, it turns out, he had not owned the car for very long.  He was a really funny guy, and told us that everything that belonged to him was for sale--except his wife, he wanted to hold on to her--and that relates to the reason for the sign (keep reading, my feminist friends, don't be offended, he wasn't saying that he owned his wife).

Siggi told us fairly quickly what his actual bottom line price was (even less than the 15% difference from the asking price that we had been advised was a good way to start the bargaining process).  And he told us the story of the sign on the side of the car.  It seems he had owned a green Subaru, and his wife really liked it.  But he sold the car, and she keeps telling him that she really liked that car.  So when he bought this car, he decided to put a sign on it that says "This is a green Subaru," so that his wife would like this car.  But of course, it is not a green Subaru.  And so he sold it to us.

So now we have a car, partly to get around Reykjavik more easily when the buses aren't running, but mostly to travel around the country and see more of Iceland. When I told my brother that we bought a car from a guy named Siggi, he asked whether Siggi wore white shoes and had a great sense of humor--that would be our great uncle Siggi.  Maybe the sense of humor goes with the name.  At any rate, now we have a car.  And a story.