Wednesday, August 24, 2005

So you want that in blew? or why I hate buying cars

So, I spent two hours of my life last night becoming increasingly frustrated attempting to get a shady car dealer to tell me how much a car really costs. We're trying to buy a new car and I can't stand the process--too much listening to dealers talk, too much shading the truth on just how likely it is that I will drive this car off the lot tonight, too much "sign your name here, but it doesn't really mean anything." Then why am I signing my name?

Anyway, there was some (sad) comedy to the whole affair. This salesperson did several things that just blew my mind and make me wonder how long he'll hang around in the car-selling biz.
  • He told me very early on that he used to work for a Toyota (although he pronounced it tie-yoda) dealer down the street and then proceeded to say "Toyota" or mention Toyota models twice as much as he said the word Honda (the new dealership he works at)
  • He told me throughout the 2 hour ordeal that he used to be a middle school teacher, that he is a karate instructor, that he went to Bible college and claims he spelled my name in Hebrew and that he is an amateur magician.
  • We were looking at a specific car and when he asked me what color the car was, I told him "steel blue" as that's what Honda calls light blue. He wrote on the sheet: blew.
  • I didn't want the blue one. Our color preference is black. Our second choice is "fern." When I told him this, he said, "Fern, that's a color? How do you spell that?"
  • At one point he made the statement: "I don't know that much about cars."
  • When he described the Consumer Reports article in which the Honda Pilot beat all other SUVs, he said, "Yeah, when I looked at that, I was surprised at all the red marks it got. Red circles, red half-circles. I mean this is a really good car."

I think I told him more about the vehicle I wanted to buy than he told me and in the end, we all ended up frustrated. Heading to yet another Honda dealer (our 4th one) this weekend. Hopefully, they'll have a blew one at the right price.

2 comments:

Pete said...

Hold out for "magnum". "blue steel" is last year's look, according to Derek Zoolander.

Pete said...
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