A New Car

For the pass two weeks I have been immersed in the process of purchasing a new car.  The Nissan Sentra that we currently drive has been the best car that we have had in the last 41 years of car ownership.  It is over 8 years old now and it is tired and we are becoming a little uncertain of its continued reliability.  So Cathie and I have decided to purchase a new car.  The first thing that we became aware of is that there are a lot of choices out there for the kind of car that we were looking for.  Additionally, the Internet provides great tools for determining what is available and gives very good information concerning the relative costs of vehicles and their different configurations.  From my initial Internet searches I created a list of about 10 cars that I just wanted to look at.

After a trip to all the dealers on my list, grabbing brochures and without talking to any sales people I then whittled my list down to five cars in our price range.  We then talked to sales persons at each of the dealers and Cathie and I took test drives.  One car, the new 2012 Sentra, quickly fell of the list because we did not like the ride or the comfort.  Each of the others, a Kia Forte, a Toyota Corolla, a Honda Civic and a Hyundai Elantra were all great to drive and we would be perfectly happy to own.  It was all a matter of price.

At this point, I went back to each of the dealers with my Sentra for evaluation as a trade in.  This part has always been a bit of a shocker for me in past purchases because I always think my car is worth more than what dealers offer.  This time was no different.  One thing was clear, the hungrier the dealer was for my business, the more I was going to get offered on my trade.

If I had to pay exactly the same amount for each of the four cars on my list, I would have selected the Elantra.  I really like its new design and I liked driving it.  But it is now the best selling car in North America, the dealer knows it, and they were not giving me much for my trade in or discounts.  The price on the road was a full 10% more than the others.  It was out of consideration at its price.  The on the road offer I got for the Kia Forte was more than what Toyota and Honda came up with, so as the car we least liked it was now also out of consideration.

We were now down to two cars, the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic.  The Toyota was a real surprise to me.  I guess because it was a 2011 model (the 2012s are not out yet) the pre-trade in offer was the lowest of all cars.  My last stop was Honda.  I told the sales guy there that I was buying a car that day, either a Toyota or a Honda.  After two test-drives in both the Toyota and Honda, Cathie and I agreed that we had a slight bias for the Honda but would not pay more for it than the Toyota.  In the end, after much gnashing of teeth and dickering I was offered an on the road price for the Honda that was $18 less than the Toyota.

I bought the Honda Civic LX.