Buying a car

Recently Frangelica and I bought a new car.

The time was right. My old car was dying the death of a thousand minor repairs. We also figured out that if we bought a car right now we could avoid paying some extra Illinois taxes, at least if we interpreted the tax site correctly.

We got a flyer for a big sale. It was from some company that sells cars that I think are repossessed. Anyway, the flyer promised big BIG savings! So Frangelica and I went to check it out.

Keep in mind that I have only ever bought one car --my Saturn. There wass no negotiation, just a price sheet.

Frangelica and I headed out to the car dealership after I got off work. We both skipped dinner and just had a cookie --we thought we'd just be test driving, and we wanted to have plenty of time before the dealership closed at 9.

We were only interested in Saturn Vues. We test drove three before we settled on the one we eventually bought.

The negotiation process was... Interesting. And I'm not very good at it.

We were seated at a table. Our salesman would ferry different offers back and forth between us and the financial guy. We finally settled on a price, and then waited for an hour while the paperwork printed.

At the time I was sure that their "printer" had to have been the finest printer 1923 had to offer, given how long the process took. Later we realized that it was probably just a delaying tactic. We were both starving. Frangelica was getting sick. All we wanted to do was leave (with the new car). So when the papers arrived and almost all the numbers were different, we signed without complaint. The monthly payment was the same, which, a different salesman explained, was the important part. We were told that everything had to be accounted for in different ways, which was why the numbers didn't match the ones we had on paper from earlier that evening.

They actually invoked Enron. Since the Enron scandal, they said, they had to be very careful about how everything was written up.

Ultimately we signed and left with the new car.

We do love the car though, and ultimately that's what's important.

We also learned a few things.

• Never buy a car from a guy in a cheap suit
• Never buy a car from a guy that carries a plastic button around. When you pressed the button it said, "That was easy!"
• Never buy a car when you haven't eaten in recent memory. We didn't get out of there until after 10 (or was it 11?) --and there were no restaurants open afterwards. We dined on a fine meal from Checkers on the way home.

I'm not sorry we bought the car. We really do love it.

However, in the future I intend to only buy from places that don't negotiate --at this point basically Saturn or CarMax.