Author: Mike

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A few weeks ago we started discussing getting a new car. We intended to keep our 1996 Honda Accord a year or two longer, but with all the trouble the car companies are having we thought we might be able to get a great deal on a new car right now. After all, if you believed all the hype in the news reports, you’d expect them to be paying YOU to get a car…so we started looking around to see if a great deal was really out there.

First we checked out this year’s Toyota RAV 4. We got one of those for Louanne two years ago and we both really like it, therefore that was a big possibility. I would be driving it, however, and I kind of wanted a sedan instead of another small SUV, so we looked at the new Camry as well. I thought the Camry we test drove looked and felt very cheap inside, so we quickly eliminated it. Everything was cheap plastic with a painted flat silver finish, reminiscent of the ten-dollar portable 8-track tape player I had when I was 9.  It was funny how the salesman went on and on about how nice the interior was…I had to give him credit for his super-human ability to say that with a straight face.

After Toyota, I researched several other makes and models, including another Accord, a Scion and even the new Camaro. The Scion was very inexpensive and pretty cool, but is was a coupe and not at all practical considering Nadia will be in a car seat for quite some time still. The Camaro is affordable and VERY cool but is also FAR from practical. The Accord is excellent, as I expected, but is still a little smaller inside than what I wanted, even though the back seat is pretty roomy for a smallish car.

Ideally I wanted something larger with a lot of features, that would be good for road trips, but not something huge. After thinking about it for awhile, I found I was leaning more and more toward a luxury car, but I didn’t want to pay the price of the luxury car brands such as Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, and the like. Further, I don’t care much for the standard “luxury-sedan” look…I wanted something with more of a sporty look. Louanne had mentioned the Chrysler 300 a couple of times, and I had seen the new Dodge Charger a few times as well and loved the look. So, I did a bit of research and the 300 Touring or Limited sounded like it fit just about everything I wanted.

The next morning we headed off to a Chrysler dealership to test drive one. The car the salesman grabbed for us to drive was filthy inside and the check engine light was on, which makes you question the salesman’s judgement. How does a car with five miles on it get in that shape, and what kind of salesman would show it to you? I liked it, in theory, but it was hard to get past that bad experience. After looking over a top-of-the-line model in the showroom, however, I REALLY liked it. But it was still a bit more than I wanted to spend.

That afternoon, while Nadia napped, I did more research and thought I might as well check out the Infiniti G37 before going any further. If that didn’t work out I would consider the 300 again or else rethink the whole thing. After Nadia woke up we headed out to the nearest Infiniti dealer. The G37 had the sporty look and luxury, but the back seat felt like it was designed for spider monkeys…of below average spider monkey height. That being a bust we decided to go home, but looked at their M class on the way out. It is bigger but was about $52,000 dollars and looked like twenty other luxury sedans…there was nothing distinctive about it, in my opinion. Plus, none of the sales staff said even a single word to us or gave us a second glance, neither in the showroom nor on the lot. I certainly don’t want to be hounded by them, but I do expect them to at least acknowledge my existence if they expect me to spend $50,000 on one of their stinking cars. That attitude really soured me on Infiniti. I wonder if our experience there was in any way typical of other Infiniti dealerships.

On the way home we passed Grubbs Chrysler, which was a different dealership than the one we visited that morning. We figured that we might as well stop there and take another look at the 300s. The first thing we saw was big sale tags on everything, marked with insanely low prices. We soon discovered that Grubbs is one of the franchises that has been cut by Chrysler, and therefore everything was marked way down. We looked over several 300s and were told that there was a black one on their back lot if we didn’t like the ones there. So, we decided to test it. The first thing Nadia said when she saw that car was, “Wow! That’s a cool car, Dada!” I couldn’t disagree…it WAS a cool car. It had every feature I wanted, it was the exact size I wanted, and we ended up getting it for $8126 below MSRP (about $1500 below dealer invoice).

Finally, we added a “lifetime” warranty on it (no mileage or age limit). As far as I know there is no other car company that offers that. The catch is that it is not transferable. The truth is, they know that most people trade in their car every 4-6 years, regardless of the warranty, so “lifetime” is just an extra selling point. They can sell the lifetime warranty for more than a 5 or 7-year/100K warranty, but in most cases they won’t have to do any more warranty work than those other warranties because most people won’t keep the car that long. Someone at Chrysler is going to regret selling me that warranty, because I’ll be keeping this car a loooong time. 🙂

After getting home with the car, Nadia ran up to me, hugged my leg, and said, “Thank you for driving that car home, Daddy!” I think she believes I got it just because she liked it so much. Who knows? Maybe I did. Maybe hearing that sweet little two-year-old voice saying, “Wow! That’s a cool car, Dada!” was all it took to seal the deal.

We sold our old Accord (which you can see through the windshield in the photo above) in 45 minutes on Craig’s list. Woot! Woot!