Adventures in car shopping

So, about the car---the car is actually a happy story, not that I thought that when I was in the throes of buying the thing. I'm telling you with a sigh---I hate car shopping! Hate it. This, in a nutshell, is how I ended up having an 11-year-old car with 157,000 miles on it to trade in. Not because it was a classic. Not because I couldn't bear to part with it (though I did think is was a good car and was sad to see it go). Not because people didn't encourage (ok, push, with varying degrees of subtlety) me to buy a new car. (I mean, even my mechanic starting telling me I should get a new car, and I'm pretty sure my old one put his kid through private school). No, it's because I HATE car shopping.
The simple fact is that I'm not "a car person." Usually when people ask me what I want in a car, my honest answer is "an engine that starts every time I twist the key, and seats." Ok, sure, a radio is always nice to have, and working windshield wipers, although not thrilling, certainly have their place in the grand scheme (not to mention rain and snowstorms).


But, not being a car person, I just keep thinking it's a lot of work and a lot of money, and I can't bring myself to feel a sense of adventure. I'm not a huntress, stalking her quarry across the flat plains of the new car lots, snarling my way through the tall grass of car salesmen; I'm not a cagey entrepreneur, using her steely nerves to out-negotiate the next Donald Trump wannabe to get a killer deal; I'm not even a latter-day Philip Marlowe, tough talking the gents and dames of the car business through a haze of old cigarette smoke, with the sharp tang of whiskey still on my breath.



I'm just a simple woman, who'd like to buy a decent car, for not more than she has to pay. Seems simple, doesn't it? If only......

I started out with quite a bit of internet and library research. But the sad fact is that no matter how many numbers one has looked up in a book or on-line, eventually---all the happy "Buy a Car Without Haggling" magazine articles be darned---eventually, you will find yourself sitting across from an intently staring "sales manager" saying, "no, really, as I told the salesperson (15 times at latest count, in fact [Yeah, I wish I were exaggerating.]), I'm really not going to buy the car today. Really, I'm still shopping."

Shopping. I was shopping! Have these people never heard of shopping?

I'm a woman---I shop! It's what I do, and I'm good at it!

But, apparently, car dealers are unfamiliar with shopping. Oh, they've apparently heard the word. But they don't, as in simply do NOT, understand the concept. Shopping, to them, apparently means, "look at the car, sit in the car, buy the car." What is that? That? Is not *shopping*.

Car dealers, I found, have no clue about shopping. They don't understand the "browse." They are distrustful of the "considering stare" (as you wonder how long it will take for the two-toned interior you currently think of as "interesting" to start to annoy the bejabbers out of you). And the concept of "seeing everything before I decide"? Is an anathema.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that even if the first car I see is a nice color with an options package I can live with, I must still wander through the rest of the lot, looking at all the cars (of the model I'm considering). Even the cars with a different engine type (6 cylinder, for example). Even the cars that are a color I originally said I didn't want. They just don't get that.

And you can't explain to a car dealer (at least I couldn't) that you do this, not to delay the sale, or to wear them down, or even to cast doubts on the quality of the first car. You do this because you must. Because you might miss something that you like better. Because you might decide that, from a distance, the white one is kinda nice after all.

Or as I finally explained in exasperation to one particularly persistent sales guy, "look, I visit a dress three times in a shop before I invest $50 in it; I'm certainly not going to spend three years of monthly payments on the first car I put under my butt!" (Again, I wish I were exaggerating.)
Finally resorting to the bane of relationship breakups everywhere, I mournfully explained to a sharp-faced sales manager, who I'm sure didn't mean to stare at me as if I were a strange and tiresome new breed of bug, "It's not you, it's me; I just really need more time."

I'm pleased to say, though, that I got through this little experiment in annoying the customer as a sales technique, and eventually found a nice younger fellow who did not insist on talking about monthly payments or leasing, but just sat down and negotiated with me on the bottom line price of the car that I wanted (after wandering patiently behind me, with nary an eye-roll, as I looked at every single Sonata on the lot!).

And I ended up with a decent car, in a color I like, for a price my research told me was reasonable. And, it came standard with an engine that starts every time I turn the key, seats, a radio AND windshield wipers (as well as curtain side airbags). I had to pay extra for the sunroof, but I'm ok with that.