The problem with that suggestion is that I only want the answer to fill in the form required to get the car insured, and until the car is insured I can't take it out on the road somewhere to test the brakes as that would be illegal here.
I have considered the possibility of trading the car in on something else eventually, but that will depend on how it goes with settling the rest of the estate, primarily the sale of the house. If there is enough money to take care of several other things first and still be able to consider a nice trade-in, it's something I will think about as I've never in my life had a car that *I* picked out for myself, by myself. But paying off any outstanding debts and then looking for a condo or at least a bigger apartment will definitely come first.
OTOH I'm not much of a car person, so it's not like I have a burning desire to drive some particular make/model of vehicle, and the ones I would *really* want in that instance would be out of my price range anyway as well as extremely impractical.
Plus I've never even driven the Sonata, it's possible I will do so and then really like it. There is no doubt that it will be a vast improvement on what I've been used to... the car I'm driving now is 22 years old and I've been driving it for almost all of that. Apparently the engine in this thing is one of the last of Chevy's "Wolverine" models because it simply WILL NOT DIE. Since it's paid for and insuring it is so cheap I finally just resolved to drive it until it fell apart and/or repairs and maintenance became more expensive per year than making payments on something else. Now I won't have to do that... I'll just need to find a nice cliff somewhere to push it off of.
