I bought a new car. It is an Oldsmobile 98 Regency, built in 1992. It has 138,000 miles on it. It runs great, has all the luxury features, cloth seats, gets 27 mpg and by all guestimates it still has at least 60,000 good miles left on the engine. I got the car for $3,105 including licenses.
I had a good friend Troy take me around to new car dealers. What Troy said to each salesperson was very interesting. He said, “We are looking for a car under $4,000 and preferrably $3,000. If you start showing us cars over $4,000 we will walk off the lot. Do not hand me off. If you hand me off we will immediately leave the lot.” These sentences created an amazing attitude in the salesman.
The “do not hand me off” phrase told the salesman that we knew their tactics and we would not stand for them. The “walk off the lot” phrase told them we were serious in our proclaimation. Immediately after making these statements the salesman went inside, talked with their supervisor, and returned to walk us to the back of the dealership where several cars were stored that had been recently received in trade in.
We visited several car lots. The biggest (Lithia Motores, once a local family dealer but now a giant nationwide dealter) was the most horrible. Our first salesman at Lithia was nice, but when it came time to talk money about a car the ‘negotiator’ treated my friend Troy like he was ignorant and didn’t know what he was talking about. That’s another story…Troy held his own and I learned about assertion. Nice lession, but like I said, it’s another story.
Back to buying a car, I looked at three web sites each time I found a car I might like:
CarFax.com to which I subscribed for 30 days (cost $20). At this site I could enter the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and get a history of the car. I could learn if it had several owners and when title was transferred, as well as in what state the transfer took place. I could learn if it had had any major accidents or other indicators of abuse.
Edmunds.com where I was able to get a professional review of the car and read comments posted by the public. Amazing the difference between one car and another.
FuelEconomy.gov where I could learn the EPA rated miles per gallon for a given car.
And, finally, KellyBlueBook.com where I could see the Kelly Blue Book prices. I was told that if a car is over 110,000 miles then finance companies will not lend, so the dealer price should be the ‘private party’ price listed in Kelly Blue Book.
So I checked out a bunch of cars and the Olds 98 won the prize. Perhaps I’ll write more on this subject later because there were several interesting adventures.
For now, I’m happy…nice car.
John