Car Shopping

Looking for a car wihtout a car is challenging. Yesterday, we took the bus, two buses actually, and then walked a mile to the Honda dealer. On the way, we passed all the other dealerships and thought maybe we shouldn't even bother ith a Honda if we had to walk so far (and it was 94 degrees out).

We got to the Honda dealer. They introduced us to Brett, a former financial planner, now car salesman. I thought there was an obvious answer to the most obvious question, but Ronnie was the one who asked it. "So why did you leave financial planning?" Brett replied that he's in a band and needed to be able to travel. I'm pretty sure he just wasn't good at it.

We asked to drive a Civic and a Fit. Reality check on the fit - he said no one test drives them and that there's a 6 month wait and that they are selling for $750 over the MSRP. I asked why their website said they had two in inventory, and he said they were sold. That's annoying.

So we were left with a Civic. He couldn't find the keys to the red one we wanted to drive, but found the keys to a beige one. It had no gas in it, so the three of us got in and drove next door to the gas station. He then said, "Why don't you guys drive around and bring it back when you're ready?"

Ok. We had introduced ourselves but not given him any real information. No driver's license, no phone number, no nothing. But here were were driving this car around. I thought that given our walk, one of us should should drop the other off at the Toyota dealership and then just head back when we returned the car. Or at least we should pick up lunch or something.

Test drive over, we walked down to Toyota. There, the salesman sat in the back seat when we drove the Corolla and the Yaris. He didn't seem particularly rattled by either of our driving. I think we just didn't try hard enough....