James' Big Damn Toy
Oct. 29th, 2005 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI've been shopping around for a car for the last month or so. When I started this little adventure, I got a lot of good advice from various quarters. In the end, the advice wasn't as required as it could have been. It mostly involved how to negotiate a decent price for the car and I eventually got a car from a company with a *no haggle* policy, which suits me fine.
Some caveats: I don't know much about cars - until a few months ago I'd barely driven at all. My intended usage for this car is pleasure. It will be a weekend-only vehicle on account of my living 3.5 K from work allows me to walk to work most days. I also intend to do a lot of highway driving. This immediately knocked out two classes of cars that I would have otherwise looked into: Hybrids (which depend on stop-and-go to bring their city mileage up to their highway mileage) and the Smart Car. Both excellent ideas, just not ones suited to what I'd be needing.
At first, I wanted a Volkswagen New Beetle (or as my circle of friends likes to call it, the iBug), because it looked cool. Superficial as that is for a reason it was a decent place to start and I did end up test driving one, which was nice. However, when I did my research I discovered some disquieting things about the iBug.
The iBug is built on the same chassis as the Golf and the Jetta. It is in fact the upper trim level of the Golf, except with a different body - a body that is less safe, less comfortable for people in the back seat (when someone as short as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wendy_licious has no head room in the back seat, there's a major problem) and less fuel efficient. Basically, VW made too many sacrifices to the Golf just to make it look cool. Plus it's about a grand more expensive for no good reason.
Don't get me wrong, I think cool is good and by itself that might make me choose one car over another, all else being equal. It's not a good enough reason to pay more for less though - so the iBug was out.
Next I decided that if I was going to go for a sensible car, I better find out what's what. So I signed up for Consumer's Report online. Just $25 bucks a year for more info then you could shake a punji stick at. First up on CR's site was the Golf, which as I mentioned is a better car than the iBug. Not much better as it turns out. Germans might be brilliant mechanical engineers, but their electrical engineering leaves something to be desired. The cars did not have high satisfaction ratings due to the electrical system being somewhat flakey. This assessment was echoed by two coworkers who had electrical problems on their Golfs.
So I checked CR's site for what they considered to be the best cars in terms of reliability and fuel efficiency. It came up with the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla. The ratings on these cars were almost too good to be true - basically 100% in all categories for both cars. Apparently the Japanese know a thing or two about making automobiles.
At the same time, the Calgary Herald had an article about fuel efficient cars. I think it was called the 50-litre challenge. The premise, the writers had the local car dealerships (somewhere in Ontario/Quebec) provide their most fuel efficient cars. Each car got exactly 50 litres of fuel and then the test drivers drove them all to empty and measured how far each one went. For consistency they all took the same route and the drivers periodically swapped cars to make sure driver ability wasn't skewing the results.
End result, the Civic and the Corolla came in first and second. The Honda was the only one to go over 1000 K (1022 K), the Corolla got 911).
Do I expect to get anything like this sort of fuel efficiency? Nope. For one thing, I can't drive a manual transmission and I have no desire to learn. A human being who knows how to shift efficiently will get better mileage than an automatic transmission. On the other hand, of the people I know who drive manuals, less than half fall into that category.
So these were suddenly not only the most reliable cars (the Civic and the Corolla), they were also the most fuel efficient. These would be my targets.
First up for a test drive would be the Corolla, which I tooled around Arbour Lake with (run for your lifecanadianknight). It was nice, but it wasn't great. It's biggest problem is that the steering wheel tilted, but didn't telescope. Being 6'4", I push the seat all the way back - this means I have to stretch my arms out to reach the steering wheel, it doesn't take long for me to get a knot right between the shoulder blades when I have to drive like that.
The price was good and everything was positive, except for that one design flaw. Still, the car didn't sing to me. Before making a decision, I would have to check out the Honda.
Now I went to a Honda dealership at the Auto Mall and got the worlds most lack luster salesman. He was all "I suppose I could help you, if it's not too much effort" and that left a bad taste in my mouth. Unfortunately, all of the test drive vehicles were out for drives so we went away thwarted.
A week later I tried going to Honda in the NE and managed to show up 1/2 an hour after closing. Ugh.
A week after that I got there on time and again found they had no test drive models available. I also discovered tow things: First, Honda doesn't negotiate on the price. They don't have to because the cars sell themselves. They can haggle with you, or they can sell it for full price to the guy standing behind you waving his credit card. Second, they were down to the last of the 2005 models.
A week after that they were out of the 2005s across the city. I had missed my window of opportunity. It was buy the Corolla now, or wait a month for the 2006 Civics to come in. I opted to wait.
While waiting I still needed to practice driving, so one weekend I rented a Ford Focus and the next I rented a Pontiac Grand Am. The Grand Am was nice, for a boat. The Focus, not so much.
Finally there was last weekend where I had to go to archery practice on the bus. This is a pain because the Calgary Archery Center is almost exactly antipodal to my house in Calgary. This strengthened my resolve to get off my ass and actually buy the car. I made an appointment with Village Honda (which I should have done from the start given as how they are in the same quadrant of the city as I am). Next day I showed up at the dealership all bright eyed and busy tailed. Sales Guy showed off the car to me and then we took it out for a test drive. He encouraged me to break the law several times.
The Civic was head and shoulders above every other car I've tried. And hell, they probably had me at the telescoping steering wheel, but it just kept getting better and better. They even had it in the colour I wanted (Royal Blue), in the trim level I wanted (LX) and it was in stock. I told Sales Guy I'd sleep on it and check with my insurance company.
As an aside, I have discovered that the car salesman stereotype is alive and well. Now I've been a salesman, and I was never like these guys. The closest analogy I can think of is Ken the Sales Weasel from Dilbert. Essentially it's an attitude that they exude that reeks of insincerity. Back in the dark ages I used to be a salesman (for Office Despot, selling tech) and neither I, nor my coworkers were like that. Is it something unique to vehicles? I can see it with used cars, but why would you need to be like that with something like a Honda?
My guy wasn't so bad (just really obsequious), but his manager came out and tried to charm me at one point and it just felt really really creepy.
This wouldn't bother me so much, but when I encounter it I become very defensive in a particular way: I become stiff and emotionless. Think Vulcan-Android-Serial-Killer emotionless and you'll have a pretty good idea. I answer in a monotone and the answers are very terse. My stare becomes unblinking and focuses on the other persons eye's to the point where the bridge of there nose starts to smolder. Don't even think about me cracking a smile. I imagine it would almost be comical to look at as a third party, assuming they weren't terrified.
Monday rolled around and I talked to my insurance company. I've discovered that actuarials don't take into account people like me. I kept baffling them with my answers. You're 37, you've only had your license since 2000 and you've never owned a car? And you've lived in Calgary your whole life? If "WTF" wasn't unprofessional, I'd swear the guy would have said it.
So here's the good news, lacking any reasons to ding my insurance, I've been catapulted into a category that's probably better than I deserve. I have a 4 star rating! And a pretty decent insurance rate! Nothing quite like a spotless record to make those bean counters salivate.
So I called up sales guy.
After double checking and attempting to get one from another dealership, sales guy finally tells me that the closest thing they have is a silver one, but it won't be at the dealership until the end of the week._thwap has the same deal with his car. Of course he needs to get an oil change every month because of all the driving he does, so it's a better deal for him than me. meh.
Sales Guy handed me off to Sales Girl, who handles the paper work and also pimps the accessories. A few bucks later I have an extended warranty and enough high tech coatings to allow my car to survive on the surface of Venus.
As I attempted to leave, I discovered that spending 25k+ entitles you to some serious ass kissing! Sales guy offered to drive me home.
We arrive at the Co-op.
And then I waited. and waited. and waited. When I bought the car Monday, Sales Guy told me that it was already in Calgary, but not yet in the dealership. "It would be in Tomorrow, or the day after. The day after that at the latest", he said. Lies. I got the car this morning (Saturday). And I was planning on taking it to archery last night. So here's how you can tell a Sales Weasel from someone who is genuinely helpful - The weasel will tell you how much they're going to help you, but a regular person will actually make some effort to help you. I know it's only a few days late, and now that I have the car I'm pretty happy about it, but my dealings with Pointe of Screw Condominiums has eliminated any tolerance for that sort of bullshit. I instantly went into defensive mode and began thinking the worst, when the car wasn't ready on time.
Oh well, it's all better now. Here's a picture of my baby, for those of you that care. You can also see what losing 49 pounds has done to my (formerly) blob-like physique:
Some caveats: I don't know much about cars - until a few months ago I'd barely driven at all. My intended usage for this car is pleasure. It will be a weekend-only vehicle on account of my living 3.5 K from work allows me to walk to work most days. I also intend to do a lot of highway driving. This immediately knocked out two classes of cars that I would have otherwise looked into: Hybrids (which depend on stop-and-go to bring their city mileage up to their highway mileage) and the Smart Car. Both excellent ideas, just not ones suited to what I'd be needing.
At first, I wanted a Volkswagen New Beetle (or as my circle of friends likes to call it, the iBug), because it looked cool. Superficial as that is for a reason it was a decent place to start and I did end up test driving one, which was nice. However, when I did my research I discovered some disquieting things about the iBug.
The iBug is built on the same chassis as the Golf and the Jetta. It is in fact the upper trim level of the Golf, except with a different body - a body that is less safe, less comfortable for people in the back seat (when someone as short as
wendy_licious has no head room in the back seat, there's a major problem) and less fuel efficient. Basically, VW made too many sacrifices to the Golf just to make it look cool. Plus it's about a grand more expensive for no good reason.Don't get me wrong, I think cool is good and by itself that might make me choose one car over another, all else being equal. It's not a good enough reason to pay more for less though - so the iBug was out.
Next I decided that if I was going to go for a sensible car, I better find out what's what. So I signed up for Consumer's Report online. Just $25 bucks a year for more info then you could shake a punji stick at. First up on CR's site was the Golf, which as I mentioned is a better car than the iBug. Not much better as it turns out. Germans might be brilliant mechanical engineers, but their electrical engineering leaves something to be desired. The cars did not have high satisfaction ratings due to the electrical system being somewhat flakey. This assessment was echoed by two coworkers who had electrical problems on their Golfs.
So I checked CR's site for what they considered to be the best cars in terms of reliability and fuel efficiency. It came up with the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corolla. The ratings on these cars were almost too good to be true - basically 100% in all categories for both cars. Apparently the Japanese know a thing or two about making automobiles.
At the same time, the Calgary Herald had an article about fuel efficient cars. I think it was called the 50-litre challenge. The premise, the writers had the local car dealerships (somewhere in Ontario/Quebec) provide their most fuel efficient cars. Each car got exactly 50 litres of fuel and then the test drivers drove them all to empty and measured how far each one went. For consistency they all took the same route and the drivers periodically swapped cars to make sure driver ability wasn't skewing the results.
End result, the Civic and the Corolla came in first and second. The Honda was the only one to go over 1000 K (1022 K), the Corolla got 911).
Do I expect to get anything like this sort of fuel efficiency? Nope. For one thing, I can't drive a manual transmission and I have no desire to learn. A human being who knows how to shift efficiently will get better mileage than an automatic transmission. On the other hand, of the people I know who drive manuals, less than half fall into that category.
So these were suddenly not only the most reliable cars (the Civic and the Corolla), they were also the most fuel efficient. These would be my targets.
First up for a test drive would be the Corolla, which I tooled around Arbour Lake with (run for your life
canadianknight). It was nice, but it wasn't great. It's biggest problem is that the steering wheel tilted, but didn't telescope. Being 6'4", I push the seat all the way back - this means I have to stretch my arms out to reach the steering wheel, it doesn't take long for me to get a knot right between the shoulder blades when I have to drive like that.The price was good and everything was positive, except for that one design flaw. Still, the car didn't sing to me. Before making a decision, I would have to check out the Honda.
Now I went to a Honda dealership at the Auto Mall and got the worlds most lack luster salesman. He was all "I suppose I could help you, if it's not too much effort" and that left a bad taste in my mouth. Unfortunately, all of the test drive vehicles were out for drives so we went away thwarted.
A week later I tried going to Honda in the NE and managed to show up 1/2 an hour after closing. Ugh.
A week after that I got there on time and again found they had no test drive models available. I also discovered tow things: First, Honda doesn't negotiate on the price. They don't have to because the cars sell themselves. They can haggle with you, or they can sell it for full price to the guy standing behind you waving his credit card. Second, they were down to the last of the 2005 models.
A week after that they were out of the 2005s across the city. I had missed my window of opportunity. It was buy the Corolla now, or wait a month for the 2006 Civics to come in. I opted to wait.
While waiting I still needed to practice driving, so one weekend I rented a Ford Focus and the next I rented a Pontiac Grand Am. The Grand Am was nice, for a boat. The Focus, not so much.
Finally there was last weekend where I had to go to archery practice on the bus. This is a pain because the Calgary Archery Center is almost exactly antipodal to my house in Calgary. This strengthened my resolve to get off my ass and actually buy the car. I made an appointment with Village Honda (which I should have done from the start given as how they are in the same quadrant of the city as I am). Next day I showed up at the dealership all bright eyed and busy tailed. Sales Guy showed off the car to me and then we took it out for a test drive. He encouraged me to break the law several times.
The Civic was head and shoulders above every other car I've tried. And hell, they probably had me at the telescoping steering wheel, but it just kept getting better and better. They even had it in the colour I wanted (Royal Blue), in the trim level I wanted (LX) and it was in stock. I told Sales Guy I'd sleep on it and check with my insurance company.
As an aside, I have discovered that the car salesman stereotype is alive and well. Now I've been a salesman, and I was never like these guys. The closest analogy I can think of is Ken the Sales Weasel from Dilbert. Essentially it's an attitude that they exude that reeks of insincerity. Back in the dark ages I used to be a salesman (for Office Despot, selling tech) and neither I, nor my coworkers were like that. Is it something unique to vehicles? I can see it with used cars, but why would you need to be like that with something like a Honda?
My guy wasn't so bad (just really obsequious), but his manager came out and tried to charm me at one point and it just felt really really creepy.
This wouldn't bother me so much, but when I encounter it I become very defensive in a particular way: I become stiff and emotionless. Think Vulcan-Android-Serial-Killer emotionless and you'll have a pretty good idea. I answer in a monotone and the answers are very terse. My stare becomes unblinking and focuses on the other persons eye's to the point where the bridge of there nose starts to smolder. Don't even think about me cracking a smile. I imagine it would almost be comical to look at as a third party, assuming they weren't terrified.
Monday rolled around and I talked to my insurance company. I've discovered that actuarials don't take into account people like me. I kept baffling them with my answers. You're 37, you've only had your license since 2000 and you've never owned a car? And you've lived in Calgary your whole life? If "WTF" wasn't unprofessional, I'd swear the guy would have said it.
So here's the good news, lacking any reasons to ding my insurance, I've been catapulted into a category that's probably better than I deserve. I have a 4 star rating! And a pretty decent insurance rate! Nothing quite like a spotless record to make those bean counters salivate.
So I called up sales guy.
"That royal blue Civic LX sedan - I'll take it", says I.Fuck.
"It's gone!", replies Sales Guy.
"How long until you get another one?"
"Probably not until the end of November!"
After double checking and attempting to get one from another dealership, sales guy finally tells me that the closest thing they have is a silver one, but it won't be at the dealership until the end of the week.
"Can I reserve that one for you?!", asks Sales Guy.So I reserve it, and headed up there after work on Monday.
"I dunno. I'd *really* like the royal bleu one, and I don't feel like waiting a month to get it. If I get the Silver, can you do something on the price?"
"... I'll talk to my manager."
"Unfortunately, Honda has a *no haggle* policy, so I can't do anything on the price for you. But my manager and I can swing you a deal on maintainence - we can give you free oil changes for the first 5 years you own the car."I suspect this is there standard throw-the-customer-a-bone tactic. I know I'm not the ony person to get this deal -
"Ok, I'll take it.
_thwap has the same deal with his car. Of course he needs to get an oil change every month because of all the driving he does, so it's a better deal for him than me. meh.Sales Guy handed me off to Sales Girl, who handles the paper work and also pimps the accessories. A few bucks later I have an extended warranty and enough high tech coatings to allow my car to survive on the surface of Venus.
As I attempted to leave, I discovered that spending 25k+ entitles you to some serious ass kissing! Sales guy offered to drive me home.
"But I'm not going home - I'm going grocery shopping"During the ride he continues to gush at me, which is growing more and more unnerving, but hey, I'm getting home a good hour ahead of schedule.
"Can I drive you to the grocery store?!"
"It's the Dalhousie Co-op, is that alraight?"
"Sure, I can drop you off there!"
We arrive at the Co-op.
"I can wait here while you're doing your shopping if you'd like!"I'm surprised he didn't offer a blow job.
"No that's OK, It's just one bag."
And then I waited. and waited. and waited. When I bought the car Monday, Sales Guy told me that it was already in Calgary, but not yet in the dealership. "It would be in Tomorrow, or the day after. The day after that at the latest", he said. Lies. I got the car this morning (Saturday). And I was planning on taking it to archery last night. So here's how you can tell a Sales Weasel from someone who is genuinely helpful - The weasel will tell you how much they're going to help you, but a regular person will actually make some effort to help you. I know it's only a few days late, and now that I have the car I'm pretty happy about it, but my dealings with Pointe of Screw Condominiums has eliminated any tolerance for that sort of bullshit. I instantly went into defensive mode and began thinking the worst, when the car wasn't ready on time.
Oh well, it's all better now. Here's a picture of my baby, for those of you that care. You can also see what losing 49 pounds has done to my (formerly) blob-like physique:
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Date: 2005-10-30 03:55 pm (UTC)