The Ride Home

Picked up the new car tonight about 6:30 p.m. It is freaking sweet. I’ve never bought a brand new car before. It’s a great feeling. It really, really is. My life is great.

I’ll post pictures once I get some in the daylight.

There’s supposedly a 300-400 mile break-in period where I’m not supposed to red-line it, slam on the breaks or go over 60 mph on the interstate. Yeah, that last one probably isn’t going to happen. Obviously whoever makes new cars has never driven in Nashville traffic. You go what everyone else goes, which is usually either 80 or 30.

Of course, now I’m going to be the best driver ever (read: paranoid as all get out) as to not hurt my baby. The Civ.

Tags: honda, civic, new car!

Well, it will tomorrow.

After an ALL FREAKING DAY experience of haggling with salesmen Saturday, I finally bought my new car. I’ll actually pick it up Monday night.

Here’s the deal. These Civics are hard to come by. Especially the trim and color that I wanted. All the dealers locally have only a couple in stock (DW had the most, I think five, of the trim I wanted.) After a couple weeks of talking to dealer Internet departments, we found they had a black one and a royal blue one at Darrell Waltrip in Franklin and headed down there. We test drove the blue one, but after looking around the lot we decided that the blue looked a little too purple, so I decided on the black one.

We headed inside to talk about price, and I started to realize just how high-pressure they were at this place. Before we’d even talked about final price the salesman had decided that we were going to buy it. He took my car for an appraisal and of course came back about $500 too low. We figured, fuck it, let’s go ahead and see how much all this is going to cost out-the-door. We had an appointment set up with our man Todd at Reddell Honda in Murfreesboro anyway, and liked him well enough that even though they didn’t have the car in stock we wanted to give him a chance to beat DW’s price.

So we’re talking to the DW guy about price and everything (got him to come up to what I would take for my car), and of course they have the stupid dealer add-ons like mudguards, pinstripes (which do look really nice) and some cargo tray. We told him to take the cargo tray and stick it where the sun don’t shine, and when he said he couldn’t take the pinstripes and the mudguards off we said fine, but we’re not paying for them.

After saying no, thanks, about two times, the sales manager came over and said fine, you’re not paying for them.

That’s what I thought.

Then he comes back over and says he can’t sell us the car for under MSRP. Now, I know from months of research and talking to people that there is not much room between invoice and MSRP on these cars. My sister’s boyfriend used to sell cars and still works with dealers around the country, and he told me that the best I could probably expect would be $500 under MSRP. He knows that in several places people are even paying above it. He told me I could offer less, but they probably wouldn’t even touch it. He was right. No dealer in town would.

I couldn’t pick some car that no one wants, right?

So we finally get them down to a satisfactory price under MSRP but not by much, but I still want to head back to Reddell and give ole Todd a shot. I honestly would rather buy the car from Todd. We went in back in October, before the 07s had hit the lot, and test drove an 06. We spent maybe 20 mins with him, he never wrote anything down. We just had a nice chat. When I called him last week to tell him I was coming by to talk, he remembered everything about the car I wanted two seconds after I told him who was calling. No time to look me up on a computer, refer back to notes, etc.

Now, some people might say, “That’s his job.” Which is true. But when Ian and I bought our HOUSE our realtor didn’t know who the hell we were every time we called. And we called a lot because our house was late in being built.

So we both liked Todd. I didn’t want to give my hard-earned money to some asshole that had already told me they’re used to people paying cash for cars in Franklin, like that was supposed to scare me or something. (They also kept saying they could tell I’d done my research, like because I was a girl I wasn’t supposed to know anything about cars, and the salesman’s jaw hit the floor when I told him I already had my own financing at over a point below the national average. He also thought we had just graduated college. Probably explains why he treated us like kids the whole time. Like it was our first rodeo.)

Anyway, we had a good feeling about Todd and wanted to go back and see what he could do. So we told the DW people we were going to get something to eat and would be back. Ten minutes after we left the lot the salesman called my cell phone to see how we were doing. That pissed me off.

I was already a little pissed because when I initially emailed about what they had in stock, I said my preferred method of contact was email. They called me later that day, before even emailing first. Now they’re not even giving us 10 minutes to supposedly eat. We said we were thinking about the offer and would call him back in an hour.

So we raced back to M’boro and picked BK up at the groomer’s (that’s another blog), dropped her off at home and headed to Reddell, where Todd was quite happy we didn’t blow him off just because they didn’t have the car on the lot. After about 30 mins. of negotiating (it’s so funny to hear the manager yell, “BUT I ALREADY TOOK OFF $500!!!!! I CAN’T DO ANY MORE!!!” and then watch them come back lower anyway) we got them down to a deal that was better than DW’s and good enough to make me happy to wait until they could get the car Monday (they’re just go to DW and get that same car for me. Well, they’re 99.99% sure they are, unless someone else buys it before Monday morning. Then they’ll go to Chattanooga, most likely).

So here we are. All I’ve got to do is show up Monday evening sometime with check in hand, drive the car to make sure all’s cool, give ‘em some moolah and I’m set.

And you know what’s funny? When we got home from Reddell, I had a message from DW’s sales manager saying he just wanted to follow up, and his deal was good until 8 p.m. that night. When I called him back to say we’d found it elsewhere for less, he had no idea who I was.

I’m so glad I trusted my intuition and went back to Murfreesboro.

Tags: honda civic, new car

So I have been getting my car ready to trade in to the dealer when I buy my new car, and the last incident was that my right tail light was rusted out so I did not have a reverse light or a right blinker. (We tried replacing the lights, but the whole thing was rusted beyond use.) I can honestly say I never truly appreciated the value of a back turn signal. But now that I drive 75 miles a day—about 72 of these miles on the interstate—I know just how important it is. Especially when you are driving in bats-out-of-hell traffic in Nashville and trying to merge in or out of traffic.

Well, Ian and looked online to see how much a tail light assembly would cost. $150. Screw that. Then Ian had the grand idea to look at an auto salvage lot or a junkyard. Surprisingly, several salvage lots in Murfreesboro had their inventory online. We found one for $50 that was in good condition, and headed out there Saturday. (“Out there” is an understatement. They supposedly were located in Murfreesboro, but it was in BFE. The streets changed withouts signs, and where you thought you’d go straight to stay on the road actually ended up taking you down a completely different road, though the numbers on the mailboxes still descended accordingly.)

Let me tell you this: If there is ever a time to look like a redneck, that time is when you go to the auto salvage lot. And yes, there really is always a dog at a junkyard.

This place ruled. Wrecked cars piled on top of each other, most behind a fence, but many just laying around where anyone could jump on top of them or do whatever you’d feel like doing at a salvage lot. I thought it would be cool to see a 25-car high tower of flames, but that’s just me.

So we walk in the office of this joint, which was, obviously, covered in parts pulled out of junked cars. (If you ever want a crappy stereo, head down Mt. Herman Road. They’ve got you covered.) We tell the dude behind the counter what we’re looking for, he punches some keystrokes on his computer’s keyboard, and we commence the following conversation:

Salvage lot dude: “Yeah, we’ve got one. It’s $85.”
Ian: “85 dollars!?!”
Salvage lot dude: “Well, we can do it for $75.”
Me: “Uh, your Web site said 50.”
Salvage lot dude: “Oh. Well we can do it for $50, that’s fine.”

Ian and I, thinking to ourselves: “Why didn’t we say $35??!”

I suppose because we had all of our teeth and funny, artsy glasses they thought we wouldn’t dicker over price. Well fuck that. I’ll argue over price with anyone, no matter what color their neck is.

So after what seemed like 3 hours of waiting in a diesel-covered waiting area alternated with 2 hours of kicking rocks outside because I couldn’t breathe anymore inside, our tail light appeared and we rocked out.

It actually was an interesting experience. I would have taken pictures of all the wreckage around the lot, but I was seriously afraid someone would have come out and shot me.

Tags: salvage lot, Murfreesboro, redneck adventures