New Car

Not an actual picture, but it looks almost exactly like it, minus the spoiler.


Okay, so we went to Crown Toyota Yesterday. We walked in, test drove a few cars, decided what we wanted and went in for a 3 hour negotiation. They didn't have exactly what we wanted, but they said they could get the car from another nearby sister dealership with no problem, so we went into negotiations for what we wanted, which was a blue Toyota Corolla S with a manual transmission. I negotiated hard with the guy (his name was Richard). I started by telling him that I had a dad who was in the business for a lot of years, which seemed to intimidate him a little (heh heh). I have to say, negotiation can get pretty nasty. Ultimately though, we came to a deal, assuming that the trade in would be $1500 for Maggie's Acura, we would put down $2000, and the dealership would drop $600 from their $1100 profit. He led me to believe that the Acura would probably come in for $1500 and they would have the car we wanted by the end of the negotiation. I felt confident (mistake) that he could finally run the credit app, so he did. Then he came back and told us that he could only accept $1000 for the trade in. I argued and argued over that, but he just wouldn't budge. I finally told him to go back and try one more time to negotiate for $1500 trade in or to knock down their profit considerably and if that couldn't be done, then we weren't doing the trade in. He came back with another guy (his higher up named Tim) and this new guy explained that they didn't have the car we wanted, but he asked if we would accept something they had in inventory if he gave us an "amazing" deal. We said we'd look and so we did. We ultimately found another one that we liked. It, however, was an automatic ($1000 more) and had the sport package ($825 more), but it was burgundy (what Maggie really wanted) and it was automatic (what I really wanted), oh and a spoiler (another thing I really wanted). So we went back in and Tim took us to his desk, instead of sitting out at the circular tables they had. He mentioned that Richard had told him about my dad being in the business, so they knew I knew how to work it. That was cool, even though my dad only prepped me for about twenty minutes collectively, it was enough for me to wing it. Anyway, I told him that If they could bring the price down to what we were originally going to pay for the first car, that we would go for it. So, he worked it down for us by about $1300, which ended up being about $500 more than our original deal with the manual Corolla. So, I explained that the only way he was going to get us was if he gave us the lowest interest rate possible, took our trade in for $1500, and would give us a five year loan. Well, he came back and told us that we had a deal. The loan was a five year at 5.5%, the trade in would be $1500, and we were finally happy. We ended up only having to finance $13000, whereas the previous deal, with trade in, would have been five dollars under $14000. That wasn't all though. Once we went into finance, they rang us up with a 4.1% interest rate because Maggie's a college grad and offered a 6 year warranty, plus free maintenance, road side assistance, and an extra $400 toward our down for what came out to be $33 more a month. Our payments will be $314 a month. I asked Richard (Who said he'd been doing this for 13 years) if I did a good job, in his opinion, at negotiating, since it was my first time. His response was that I did awesome at negotiating and couldn't believe it was the first car we'd ever negotiated for and bought. I have my dad's prepping to thank for that. Ice water running through my veins...ice water. So, we walked out and got into our new burgundy, sports package, power everything, keyless entry, Toyota Corolla S, and drove away. It was raining when we walked out, which gave us the opportunity to use the windshield wipers (very exciting). Then I couldn't find my way out of the dealership for like ten minutes because they closed the gate I knew about and blocked off two of the aisles I tried to go down, but we ultimately found our way out. So now we've got our brand new car and we're extremely happy. The automatic has enough power and it's just plain better. Automatics hold their resale/trade-in value a lot better anyway. I just don't like manuals that much because they're so much work. While manuals give you more availability for power, I prefer the automatic because you can do other things with your hand and foot, like NOT use them every time you have to move the car. So, Maggie's really happy. The negotiating was hard for her to sit through, because she doesn't like listening to such intense debates, especially when they seem almost threatening, but I didn't think the salesman's life was that big of a deal, cause if it was, he would have negotiated for it. Heh. Anyway, it's late, and I have to work tomorrow. So, I love you all, take care, and we'll go for a drive sometime.