I have bought a car
Apr. 14th, 2011 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnOh dear God I've just bought a car. I was hopeful about sealing a good deal this morning when we went back to the Honda dealership for a third time to test drive the actual model we were after, but I was prepared for it to go either way, if they couldn't match the price we wanted.
We had been advised that the initial offer that I had planned ($2000 under the sticker price) would be regarded as comical at best, but when we were talking about the other cars we were looking at I managed to find a point to half-jokingly say that if he could get it down as far as that, then we wouldn't give anything else a second thought. To my great surprise, he took it seriously, went to talk to his invisible boss, and after one iteration at $700 below the given price, I brought out the other offer that we'd had by phone from another dealership, which knocked them all the way down to $1400 below.
That made me feel a lot better about going a bit above the station that we had originally planned - we're getting the third-level car for the price of the second-level one. After our victory on the base price we got re-screwed a bit because of having to arrange to install Bluetooth separately (which unlike our other model options, wasn't a standard feature), and a small "VSI fee" which I didn't have the energy to contest by that point. But on the whole, we did much better than I had imagined, and got a price that was something like $150 under the average price paid on the Internet. We just had to wait a couple of hours while they washed it down and took the plastic off.
Do you want to see it?
Here are some technical details, as far as I know about them:
The decision: Honda Fit. Thanks to everyone who recommended this to me -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wolfekko, ms_noone, sporty_fox, people at work... I should have known from the beginning that the one that I just dropped in to look at would be the one we ended up buying, as well as our previous certainty the Yaris dropping straight to the bottom of the list.
Trim: Fit + Sport + Navi, the top range of the options. As detailed before, I hadn't thought we would go this high at first, but was talked into it because of the price being nowhere near what I had feared. Along with other reasons, such as the unstealability of a built-in navigation unit, and my sense of direction (and need to concentrate fully on Boston drivers just leaping out of junctions when they feel like it).
Colour: Dark grey-ish (official name, without joking: Polished Metal Metallic)
Transmission: Automatic, with paddle shifters for sport mode
Engine: Yes, it's got one
Tyres: 4
Mileage: 30 mpg-ish combined (27/33) - drivers on forums that I've read obsessively since starting this decision report this fluctuates a lot, but usually works out as actually a little better.
Price: Enough to summon Savato all over our bank account for the time being with the down payment (Actually, this is exactly what we wanted to use the house-buying rebate for, so it's not unplanned). But I changed my original four-year loan plan to five years when I saw that there would be no overpayment penalty - that way, we can plan to pay off as if it's four years but still have some breathing room if anything disastrous happens. The interest rate is a bit higher than I would have liked at 5%, and I tried to act like this put me off, but when it was demonstrated to me that a percentage difference adjusted the monthly payment by $6 and the total cost by about $400, I decided that this wasn't really all that important either.
So now I might be able to sleep a bit better, with all the really big life changes made and put into action for the time being. Except I'm now going to be really paranoid about it just sitting out there, or having left something on that'll run the battery down, or something. Except I now have a working headlight alarm - that's a completely new experience for me.
Friends in Scotland, I realize that in our decision to get the Sport, this means that I have bought a car with a spoiler on it. I will understand if you don't want to see me for a while.
We had been advised that the initial offer that I had planned ($2000 under the sticker price) would be regarded as comical at best, but when we were talking about the other cars we were looking at I managed to find a point to half-jokingly say that if he could get it down as far as that, then we wouldn't give anything else a second thought. To my great surprise, he took it seriously, went to talk to his invisible boss, and after one iteration at $700 below the given price, I brought out the other offer that we'd had by phone from another dealership, which knocked them all the way down to $1400 below.
That made me feel a lot better about going a bit above the station that we had originally planned - we're getting the third-level car for the price of the second-level one. After our victory on the base price we got re-screwed a bit because of having to arrange to install Bluetooth separately (which unlike our other model options, wasn't a standard feature), and a small "VSI fee" which I didn't have the energy to contest by that point. But on the whole, we did much better than I had imagined, and got a price that was something like $150 under the average price paid on the Internet. We just had to wait a couple of hours while they washed it down and took the plastic off.
Do you want to see it?
Here are some technical details, as far as I know about them:
The decision: Honda Fit. Thanks to everyone who recommended this to me -
wolfekko, ms_noone, sporty_fox, people at work... I should have known from the beginning that the one that I just dropped in to look at would be the one we ended up buying, as well as our previous certainty the Yaris dropping straight to the bottom of the list.Trim: Fit + Sport + Navi, the top range of the options. As detailed before, I hadn't thought we would go this high at first, but was talked into it because of the price being nowhere near what I had feared. Along with other reasons, such as the unstealability of a built-in navigation unit, and my sense of direction (and need to concentrate fully on Boston drivers just leaping out of junctions when they feel like it).
Colour: Dark grey-ish (official name, without joking: Polished Metal Metallic)
Transmission: Automatic, with paddle shifters for sport mode
Engine: Yes, it's got one
Tyres: 4
Mileage: 30 mpg-ish combined (27/33) - drivers on forums that I've read obsessively since starting this decision report this fluctuates a lot, but usually works out as actually a little better.
Price: Enough to summon Savato all over our bank account for the time being with the down payment (Actually, this is exactly what we wanted to use the house-buying rebate for, so it's not unplanned). But I changed my original four-year loan plan to five years when I saw that there would be no overpayment penalty - that way, we can plan to pay off as if it's four years but still have some breathing room if anything disastrous happens. The interest rate is a bit higher than I would have liked at 5%, and I tried to act like this put me off, but when it was demonstrated to me that a percentage difference adjusted the monthly payment by $6 and the total cost by about $400, I decided that this wasn't really all that important either.
So now I might be able to sleep a bit better, with all the really big life changes made and put into action for the time being. Except I'm now going to be really paranoid about it just sitting out there, or having left something on that'll run the battery down, or something. Except I now have a working headlight alarm - that's a completely new experience for me.
Friends in Scotland, I realize that in our decision to get the Sport, this means that I have bought a car with a spoiler on it. I will understand if you don't want to see me for a while.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-15 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 12:08 am (UTC)For me the paddle shift is the redeeming factor -- if it's good enough for an F1 car...
no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 12:11 am (UTC)I might look into actually using the paddle gears sooner than I thought, though, just because the default for the computer seems to be staying in first gear a little longer than I think necessary, expecting you to accelerate more. This is all really strange - I've never owned a car put together after 1995 before.