When I last wrote about our car search, I mentioned that we were taking advantage of CityCarShare's easy hourly rentals to test drive some of the car models we were interested in. This saved us heaps of time that we would have WASTED at the car dealer, given all the tricks and psychological warfare tactics they use to break you down into a buyer.
One other thing it did was truly open our eyes once we did hit up a dealer to try out some vehicles we weren't able to rent. Now, our first adventure in dealer dealings was a total disaster - our salesman was a young strapping lad, so tired he fell asleep 4 times during our two test drives, and apparently the victim of a car accident that totalled HIS ride the night before... Talk about bad juju!
On the plus side, his sales pitch was apparently way toned down, as he concentrated on answering SMS messages from concerned friends, rather than interrogating us exhaustively to upsell us, or guilt us into trying to help him "keep the family fed".
Along with all this, we truly learned how important it is to research a car exhaustively before hitting the lot. The instant they think you don't know what you're getting, they're going to make sure they widen their profit margin as much as possible. On further review, my wife and I figured our teamwork wasn't quite up to snuff, either - Yoko let go of too many precious details about our needs, our budget, etc to ever make a fair deal with that salesman possible.
Which brings me to "KEY POINT NUMBER ONE":
- Whenever possible, test drive your desired vehicle in a non-sales situation (rental, borrow from a friend, etc), and if that fails, pick one dealer you KNOW you'll never buy from, and do all your test drives of their vehicles there.
It's very important that you don't fall into the trap of driving your favorite car at the closest most convenient dealer for service purposes - it's just going to be one more excuse you tell yourself when you overpay later.
As for Yoko and myself? We've got it narrowed down to the Scion xB, Toyota Matrix, Subaru Forester, and Honda Element. All Japanese cars, all highly rated for safety, with tons of cargo space. Compared to my diesel wunder-machine, though, their mileage numbers ALL suck. If anyone has some advice for where to head from here, please do LET ME KNOW!
**: Special bonus mention for the Subaru Baja - it's the perfectly wrong car for a "perfectly wrong" guy like me... Every time I see one, my heart leaps - it's just the most perfect set of compromises and craziness that I love to see, and rarely do outside the amazing yellow-plate minicars of Japan.
NEXT TIME: Spreadsheets, Cashiers Checks, and Fleet Sales, Oh My!
it's complicated
It's very important that you don't fall into the trap of driving your favorite car at the closest most convenient dealer for service purposes - it's just going to be one more excuse you tell yourself when you overpay later.
There's actually no reason to get service at the dealer where you bought the car.
And in fact, it almost never makes sense to get service at the dealer anyway, unless it's a warranty repair situation (and even then not always).
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