Car-buying saga, part 1
Jan. 12th, 2005 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishEarlier in the week I drove out to Enterprise car sales in Roanoke and test-drove a blue Saturn SC2 three-door coupe, and rather enjoyed the experience. [The salesman had me park it right next to Glyndwr, a technique I recalled from the brilliant article Confessions of a Car Salesman. It was all I could do to not burst out laughing.] I didn't buy right away, though; I still hadn't set up my loan with USAA. Turns out that, since I have no income, I need Dad to coapply, and thus to be there in person to sign the paperwork. So, after talking about heading up to NoVa this weekend to look at cars I called up my parents early Satyrday morning, and they were all set to drive down to Roanoke that day and buy the coupe at Enterprise. I felt like it was a bit pricey, but I didn't think I'd be too likely to find a better deal, and this would be a lot less hassle all around. So, as soon as Enterprise opened up I called them and said "I'd like to come buy the blue coupe." Scott the salesman responded with "Oh, sorry, our Richmond location sold it yesterday, and it's in transit." Scratch one brililant idea.
A great deal of poking around online [kbb.com and carfax.com both have 'for-sale' sections] led me to believe that three-door coupes, while not precisely common, are there to be found. So I hopped aboard the monochrome canine in Roanoke far too early on Sunday [thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uilos for driving me out there; also, boo to the closing of the bus station in Xiansburg] and rode north. Mom picked me up in her funny-bronze-grey-coloured SL2 [the SC is the two- or three-door coupe, the SL is the sedan; SC1/SL1 is a less spiffy package than the SC2/SL2] and we drove out to Manassas to look at a few they had out there. The Saturn dealership had two fairly nice-looking SC2s, one black [with leather seats] and one silver; we couldn't find the SC1 that they'd advertised for $7500, though. The Suzuki dealership [Cowles] had a blue SC1 that had been advertised online for $6450. Looking at it, I got some idea as to why it was priced so, um, reasonably: scratches all over the front bumper, a lot of moisture in one headlight, and generally pretty well-used.
Monday morning I drove Mom to work and then took her car into Manassas myself to talk to actual people and maybe do some driving. The Saturn in Manassas was very helpful; they'd sold the SC1 late last week, though, and the two SC2s were manual transmission. The salesman kept insisting, to both himself and to me, that he had an automatic black SC2 somewhere on the lot, and went so far as to begin to offer to sell it to me for the $7500 [he stopped himself halfway through]; after much computer consultation and comparing of numbers, it turned out they'd just misentered the black manual. Oh well.
Next stop Cowles, where I'd made an appointment to take their coupe out for a drive; who knows, maybe it'd wow me, somehow. Or at least be not-horrible, and palatable when I considered the price. In a word: nope. It was all but devoid of any kind of features, it handled a bit stiffly, and when I tried to open the sunroof it made a horrid grinding noise and didn't move. I made my excuses and left as quickly as possible.
Home for lunch [because I realised as I pulled into the Saturn dealership that I'd forgotten to close the garage door behind me], and a phone call, and then off to Glen Burnie, where they had a 2001 SC2 (blue) available. Now, every time I go to NoVa I fall into the Jefferson mindset of "Nothing is very far away." This occasionally causes some problems. Like this time. Glen Burnie is a suburb of Baltimore. Southern suburb, thank gosh[1], but still an hour away. Undeterred by MapQuest's time estimate and mildly-disorienting directions at the end of the route, I hopped in Mom's Saturn and headed out. And drove. And drove. And worried just a bit at the end of the route, and drove. And finally arrived at the Saturn dealership, which had been subsumed into a larger automall-type establishment.
Maybe it was the auto-mall-ness of it, or maybe I was just tired from the drive and feeling the pressure, but Saturn of Glen Burnie felt a lot more like a car dealership and less like a Saturn dealership. Regardless, I forged ahead and found my contact. He was an ex-Coast Guard guy, still with the crewcut and mustache. Not intentionally imposing, but not a put-me-at-my-ease guy, either. We chatted briefly before taking the blue coupe for a drive. [The blue that these come in is a consistent source of surprise to me. It's not a dark blue, but it's not especially bright either. Saturns are odd colours.] It drove well, it was in good shape, the colour was nice . . . but they wanted as much for it as I'd seen for cars a year newer.
I choked. Weakly, I suggested that dropping the price by $500 might be reasonable. The salesman said he'd have to talk to a manager, and the manager was out of the office right now, but he'd be back in half an hour or so. So . . . stuck in Glen Burnie with nothing to do. I drove 'til I found a parking lot, pulled in, and called Dad.
He was unimpressed, both with me and with the dealership. I should've pushed more; I should've had pricing info to quote back at the guy. [Note that none of this was overt, and some of it is doubtless me reading into what he was saying.] He was willing to go with this one, if it was the car I wanted; but, well, there were other cars out there.
Like one in Gaithersburg, which is closer to Glen Burnie than home. I pulled out of the parking lot planning on driving over to the Gaithersburg Saturn and taking a look at their silver SC2 [and hoping it was still on the lot; I had a map to the dealership but had forgotten the phone number] . . . and promptly got suckered into going the wrong way on the Baltimore beltway. Two bucks in tolls later, I'd gotten myself almost-lost just south of Baltimore. I managed to pull myself out of that mess, but at this point I was beat and had just screwed up my first shot at buying a car, so I figured I'd just head home, relax for a bit, maybe go out to Gaithersburg after dinner.
Dad called me just north of the Wilson bridge. He recommended I go visit the Saturn dealership in Alexandria: they didn't have any coupes, but they had a very nice L100 sedan with a ton of cool options. I shrugged and said "Sure, why not," and crossed my fingers hoping I could remember the directions. Found the dealership without too much hassle, drove the [burgundy] sedan around a bit, talked to a fairly low-key but insistent salesman. A ncie enough sedan, but more expensive than the highest-end of the coupes, and, well, reds are towards the bottom of my Colours of Car I Want To Drive list [2]. So I went home, riding just barely ahead of rush hour traffic, and had a fairly pleasant dinner. After dinner the three of us piled into Dad's gigantic Lincoln and headed off to Gaithersburg.
But that story will have to wait for tomorrow.
[1] "Heck is where you go when you don't believe in gosh," according tomerseine0613's sig.
[2] Deep forest green is at the top of the list, followed by deep blue and grey, then medium hues of those three and silver. Just about everything else gets lumped into the "I'd prefer not" category, except for gold / beige / tan, white, and bright red, all of which vie for Bottom of the Barrel.
A great deal of poking around online [kbb.com and carfax.com both have 'for-sale' sections] led me to believe that three-door coupes, while not precisely common, are there to be found. So I hopped aboard the monochrome canine in Roanoke far too early on Sunday [thanks to
uilos for driving me out there; also, boo to the closing of the bus station in Xiansburg] and rode north. Mom picked me up in her funny-bronze-grey-coloured SL2 [the SC is the two- or three-door coupe, the SL is the sedan; SC1/SL1 is a less spiffy package than the SC2/SL2] and we drove out to Manassas to look at a few they had out there. The Saturn dealership had two fairly nice-looking SC2s, one black [with leather seats] and one silver; we couldn't find the SC1 that they'd advertised for $7500, though. The Suzuki dealership [Cowles] had a blue SC1 that had been advertised online for $6450. Looking at it, I got some idea as to why it was priced so, um, reasonably: scratches all over the front bumper, a lot of moisture in one headlight, and generally pretty well-used.Monday morning I drove Mom to work and then took her car into Manassas myself to talk to actual people and maybe do some driving. The Saturn in Manassas was very helpful; they'd sold the SC1 late last week, though, and the two SC2s were manual transmission. The salesman kept insisting, to both himself and to me, that he had an automatic black SC2 somewhere on the lot, and went so far as to begin to offer to sell it to me for the $7500 [he stopped himself halfway through]; after much computer consultation and comparing of numbers, it turned out they'd just misentered the black manual. Oh well.
Next stop Cowles, where I'd made an appointment to take their coupe out for a drive; who knows, maybe it'd wow me, somehow. Or at least be not-horrible, and palatable when I considered the price. In a word: nope. It was all but devoid of any kind of features, it handled a bit stiffly, and when I tried to open the sunroof it made a horrid grinding noise and didn't move. I made my excuses and left as quickly as possible.
Home for lunch [because I realised as I pulled into the Saturn dealership that I'd forgotten to close the garage door behind me], and a phone call, and then off to Glen Burnie, where they had a 2001 SC2 (blue) available. Now, every time I go to NoVa I fall into the Jefferson mindset of "Nothing is very far away." This occasionally causes some problems. Like this time. Glen Burnie is a suburb of Baltimore. Southern suburb, thank gosh[1], but still an hour away. Undeterred by MapQuest's time estimate and mildly-disorienting directions at the end of the route, I hopped in Mom's Saturn and headed out. And drove. And drove. And worried just a bit at the end of the route, and drove. And finally arrived at the Saturn dealership, which had been subsumed into a larger automall-type establishment.
Maybe it was the auto-mall-ness of it, or maybe I was just tired from the drive and feeling the pressure, but Saturn of Glen Burnie felt a lot more like a car dealership and less like a Saturn dealership. Regardless, I forged ahead and found my contact. He was an ex-Coast Guard guy, still with the crewcut and mustache. Not intentionally imposing, but not a put-me-at-my-ease guy, either. We chatted briefly before taking the blue coupe for a drive. [The blue that these come in is a consistent source of surprise to me. It's not a dark blue, but it's not especially bright either. Saturns are odd colours.] It drove well, it was in good shape, the colour was nice . . . but they wanted as much for it as I'd seen for cars a year newer.
I choked. Weakly, I suggested that dropping the price by $500 might be reasonable. The salesman said he'd have to talk to a manager, and the manager was out of the office right now, but he'd be back in half an hour or so. So . . . stuck in Glen Burnie with nothing to do. I drove 'til I found a parking lot, pulled in, and called Dad.
He was unimpressed, both with me and with the dealership. I should've pushed more; I should've had pricing info to quote back at the guy. [Note that none of this was overt, and some of it is doubtless me reading into what he was saying.] He was willing to go with this one, if it was the car I wanted; but, well, there were other cars out there.
Like one in Gaithersburg, which is closer to Glen Burnie than home. I pulled out of the parking lot planning on driving over to the Gaithersburg Saturn and taking a look at their silver SC2 [and hoping it was still on the lot; I had a map to the dealership but had forgotten the phone number] . . . and promptly got suckered into going the wrong way on the Baltimore beltway. Two bucks in tolls later, I'd gotten myself almost-lost just south of Baltimore. I managed to pull myself out of that mess, but at this point I was beat and had just screwed up my first shot at buying a car, so I figured I'd just head home, relax for a bit, maybe go out to Gaithersburg after dinner.
Dad called me just north of the Wilson bridge. He recommended I go visit the Saturn dealership in Alexandria: they didn't have any coupes, but they had a very nice L100 sedan with a ton of cool options. I shrugged and said "Sure, why not," and crossed my fingers hoping I could remember the directions. Found the dealership without too much hassle, drove the [burgundy] sedan around a bit, talked to a fairly low-key but insistent salesman. A ncie enough sedan, but more expensive than the highest-end of the coupes, and, well, reds are towards the bottom of my Colours of Car I Want To Drive list [2]. So I went home, riding just barely ahead of rush hour traffic, and had a fairly pleasant dinner. After dinner the three of us piled into Dad's gigantic Lincoln and headed off to Gaithersburg.
But that story will have to wait for tomorrow.
[1] "Heck is where you go when you don't believe in gosh," according to
merseine0613's sig.[2] Deep forest green is at the top of the list, followed by deep blue and grey, then medium hues of those three and silver. Just about everything else gets lumped into the "I'd prefer not" category, except for gold / beige / tan, white, and bright red, all of which vie for Bottom of the Barrel.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 04:59 am (UTC)And I agree with your car color choices, except I'd put the blue higher than the green, add black, and totally concur with gold/beige/tan being at the bottom, along with aqua/teal/sky_blue.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 10:30 pm (UTC)I'm never quite sure what I think of black cars. They look nice, but I start thinking about roasting in the summertime, and then they start dropping in my estimation. Black would probably hover just barely north of "prefer not" on most days.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-20 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 04:51 pm (UTC)I'm glad the saga is at least over for now, but thanks for relating it!
no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 10:35 pm (UTC)And stories are there to be told. [Plus, my resolution this year is to Write More, Dammit. :] Glad you're enjoying.