The Brainstorm

I’ve spent my last two weekends traveling to Portland to look at cars.  I decided that it’s time I get a car so that I can choose to take off when I want or take a long trip every once and a while.  I narrowed down my choices to a Toyota Corolla, Nissan Altima, VW Jetta, Mitsubishi Galant or Ford Fusion.

The Research

Two weekends ago I test drove an 06 Galant and it was pretty nice.  It had leather, 500 miles and some huge factory and dealer rebates.  Most of my shopping was online and last week my dad found a VW Jetta at a used dealership.  I am a fan of four-door sedans and fairly compact cars, but the Galant is a little on the bigger side than I prefer.  So, I test drove the Jetta on Saturday and was pretty sure I wanted it, now the dealer needed to not prevent me from buying.  These were the only two slightly used cars that were in a low enough price range and the right compactness.

The Sell

The first step was filling out credit check information: address, job, education, debt, etc.  The whole time though, Harvey, not to be confused to with Oculon’s cat, took the sloooooowed dictation of my statistics.  Every letter or number was scratched over at least three times, not to mention chit-chat about school, work, etc.  Then Harvey took the paper to someone with a computer to run the credit check.  While that was processing, Harvey came back to ‘talk numbers.’

This is where it got interesting.  Harvey decided to draw up a mini ‘pre-contract contract’ with the price of the car, my desired car payment range and an x_____________.  The phrase ‘If we can do these things, then do we have a deal?’ was uttered and then I had some questions.  ‘What’s the exact monthly payment?’ ‘What is the interest rate?’ ‘How many months?’ ‘How much for the down payment?’ and then a statement: ‘I’m not signing anything until I have exact numbers.’   Apparently Harvey got spooked and said that there was no pressure and then he let someone else who knew how to use a computer or a calculator crunch the numbers.

Now a manager comes out with different options based on down payment amounts and the number of months.   They asked how much I could put down now and I said I could put some down but that I didn’t even have a checkbook with me.  Manager guy immediately offered 0 down.  I decided to dwell on my options and whether I wanted a different make or model.  Harvey rushed outside and asked me ‘what my instincts were?,’ trying to stop me from walking away.  We drove around for a while and I came back and immediately went to the manager and started filling out paperwork and got some online insurance.  The purchase took less than the half the time Harvey’s fake contract gimmick and credit application combined.

The Result

I am now a proud owner of at most 60 payments on this beaut: