Ron And Robyn's Excellent Adventures In Auto Buying (or How Toyota Talked Us Into Buying A Honda

You have to follow an association chain to see why I picked Metallic Crosses as the fractal for today's post. The basic shape of the image is round (recalling a wheel) and cars are made of metal (mostly). Buying a car takes lots of cash (thus gold and silver as in coin) so on with the rant!

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Robyn and I come from the school of thought that says you keep a car until the upkeep and maintenance (gas, insurance and car repairs) outweighs the payments and upkeep of a new vehicle. Robyn's car has finally reached that point: "Snowflake" (my name for it) or "BBQ Western" (Robyn's) has serveed us well for a long time but it's time she goes to that big car lot in the sky.

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We had a long list of requirements for what we wanted in a new vehicle. 1) the care must be reliable. (Adventures in Auto Repair isn't a game we enjoy playing.) 2) we need decent hauling capacity. (We don't have to haul bulky items often but when we do need to carry something we REALLY need the space.) 3) the cabin must have enough room for both of us to ride in comfort and be fairly easy to enter and exit. (As we get older and fatter this becomes ever more important to both of us.) Ideally we'd like something that is (at least somewhat) fuel efficient (since I believe we're never going to see truly cheap gas again and we'd like to make a slight move toward a "greener.) In the end that pretty much moved us in to full-sized sedans or baby SUVs. Oh, and price is definitely a consideration.

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Several times over the past year we've rented a Kia Rondo to take for extended trips. (See above for why we didn't take the little car.) We found the Rondo to be the right combination of handling and space (plus being $5,000 less than a comparable Japanese vehicle we found it deserved consideration.) The vehicle is hardly stylish but the vehicle has everything we want in an affordable package. Even though I realize that K.I.A. is an acronym for "killed in action" we liked the vehicle enough that we thought we should throw it into the mix. Still, I was under the mistaken impression there wasn't a Kia Dealership within 40 miles we decided to confine ourselves to the "big three" Honda, Toyota and Nisan.

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The Nisan dealership here in Corona isn't convenient to us (and we had a bad experience with another Nisan dealer several years ago) so we quickly knocked them out of contention. (Also, I think the new Altima is pretty butt-ugly and the Rogue hasn't gotten good reviews so we decided not to waste our time looking.) Honda Cars of Corona is about two miles from our home so we started there: we took a look at the new Accord but didn't care for the body styling or the fact the thing was so darn wide so we quickly dropped that off the list. The CRV had the right mix of things we needed in a vehicle and the gas mileage wasn't TOO bad for the size of the vehicle. Paul, our salesman was helpful and low key so we had a pretty good experience. I didn't love the body style but by and large the vehicle worked for us so we left with a good feeling.

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Later that same day we went to Quality Toyota of Corona to look at the Camry and RAV-4. I can't say anything about the Camry that hasn't already been said. (It is the number-one selling car in the United States after all!) About the only thing I found to dislike about the Camry was the (seemingly) small trunk. Due to the "cash for clunkers" program they were very low on stock so there was only one drivable RAV-4 on the lot. I liked the vehicle a lot (slightly roomier than the CRV and better sight lines) but it became very obvious very quickly that there was something about Robyn seriously didn't like: we found out that we were test driving a V6 and the thing just had too much power for her. In the end they promised to let us know when they got some 4 cylinder models in to test.

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Yesterday morning (September 7) we headed back to check out a four-cylinder RAV-4. Robyn was much more comfortable with this version of the RAV-4 although neither of us were convinced that the RAV-4 was what we wanted. We also ended up checking out the Scion xD (which is a slightly smaller version of the RAV-4). We thought it had a nice body style and we were strangely charmed by the acid green paint job. (You won't see too many other cars like that in a crowded parking lot!) The xD gets better gas mileage than the RAV-4 and there was enough room for the haulage we'd need. It wasn't TOO overloaded with goodies (and was $5,000 less than its larger cousin.) There was ALMOST enough room for me (plenty of head room, adequate leg room and even room for my tummy. Sadly, I couldn't find a comfortable place to put my arms: I spent the whole test drive doing the "HIndhi-Cindi" trying to find a comfortable place to put my hands. We quickly came to the conclusion that this one just wasn't going to work...

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We were about ready to head home when I thought why don't we see if they have a "newer" used car? That way we'll avoid eating the depreciation and we'll still get a good car. Wonder of wonders they did! They took us over to a 2007 RAV-4 that was a thousand bucks more than the 2009 model we'd just driven! They told us this was a "Sport" model (upgraded interior, stereo, and fancy-schmancy wheels. Still, the interior was solid black (NOT a good thing for a desert climate!) It was nice but neither of us wanted to make a deal. Still, when our salesman said, "let us run some numbers" I agreed to it. (Stupid me!)

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Thus began the part of car buying I truly HATE! Running the credit check didn't take long and it told me about what I expected to hear. Robyn's credit score is OK, not great due largely to some bills that went astray during our move last year. (Late payments stay on your credit report for three years--and they really bring the score down!) After we sat and waited for about forty minutes they came back with a deal that was nothing short of shocking. ($450 monthly payments FOR FIVE YEARS and that was after a proposed $10,000 down payment and a $4,500 rebate from Toyota.) We said we weren't going to do that and suddenly the monthly payments dropped to $350. When we wouldn't go for that we brought in the big guy. (His name was Juan and he was determined to make the deal.)

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He was all "lets get this deal started" but Robyn and I both had stated quite plainly WE WOULDN'T BE BUYING A CAR that day! Every time we'd tell him "no" he'd come up with another suggestion...

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"Can you come up with a thousand dollars now?"

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"NO!"

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"What if we delayed for first payment for 55 days? You can take the car now..."

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"NO!"

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"Can you--?"

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"NO!"

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What about--?"

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"NO!"

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"Would you like us to--?"

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"NO!

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"We could--?"

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"NO! NO! NO!" What part of "no" don't you guys understand? We have always been up front about the fact that we intended to go through Costco for our financing and the deal itself (although we'd let Toyota see if they could come up with a better deal) It was frustrating and frankly it annoyed both of us to the point where we won't be buying a Toyota (or at least from that Toyota dealership.

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In the end though--we DID learn some valuable lessons. We learned NOT to go to a car dealership without first having our financial ducks in a row and we also learned to never, Never, NEVER let a car dealer "run some numbers." Our quest to buy a new (or a newer used) car continues and I will no doubt be writing Ron And Robyn's Excellent Adventures In Auto Buying: Part Deux sometime in the coming weeks. Stay tuned. But until then...

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'nuff said.