Since my post on Friday about finding that my car had been running with no oil, a few things have changed in my life. When my mechanic recommended a specific car dealer, it got my mind running. Car dealers are not normally businesses that you hear high recommendations of. Normally, when speaking of car dealers, a high compliment could be "they didn't screw me too badly." When my mechanic, Tim, told me to go to Burn's Hyundai, and that he had sent more than 200 of his customers there, I got interested.
I started asking myself how many other car dealers I would tell somebody to go to, and if I would ever go back to another car dealer again myself. I got my first car from Red McComb's Used Cars in San Antonio, Tx in 1992. I was a senior in high school. I had already quit my Kentucky Fried Chicken job so I had a few weeks off before leaving for boot camp, and I suddenly HAD to have a Mazda truck. My mom knew somebody at this dealership so we went there to see what was available. I bought a 1990 Mazda B2200 and drove it for 3 years. The experience was good, but probably because we knew somebody.
Next, I went to Westcott Mazda in National City, California, in June of 1995. National City has a string of car dealers known as the "Mile of Cars", literally right outside of the Naval Station. I wanted to buy a 1995 Mazda Protege. I was 21 and just found out that I made E-5. (It didn't occur to me that it would take 6 months for my pay to increase accordingly.) I made a big mistake going to Westcott Mazda, by myself, on a Friday night. I told the dealer that I wanted the Protege but could only do payments around $200 a month and if he couldn't do it, then I'd just have to save up and come back later. He assured me all along that it wouldn't be a problem. After I signed away my truck and completed all of the paperwork, I sat down in finance only to be told that my payments would be $350. I told them I couldn't afford that. The bastard (pardon my language, but I'm going somewhere) actually told me that I would have a nice car and my credit qualifies me. I told him I wouldn't be able to afford gas and insurance with those payments, and the dealer assured me all along that we could do $200 a month payments. He said the dealer was crazy, and I must be too for assuming I could get that car for $200 a month, and said again that I would have a nice car. Like that would do me any good if I couldn't afford to drive it. We looked around for used cars and found a 1993 MX3. I drove that car for the next 10 years until the gas pump went out. The moonroof seal was also going and rain was leaking into the car. Since I had an extra car at that point, I let the Mazda sit too long and it molded out so we gave it away. There's no way I would EVER go back to Westcott Mazda, although they did screw me into a decent and reliable car. They also somehow miscalculated the payoff on my truck, and I had to scrounge up $300 the next week to cover that. I guess the dealer's finance department took my estimated figure "I think I owe about $1800 on the truck" and ran with it, rather than call the credit union which was actually located right there in San Diego to ask for a payoff, which I thought was standard practice anyway.
Since I drove the Mazda for 10 years, I didn't buy another car until after I was married. I tried a few times to trade it in on a Saturn or a Subaru, but the financing never worked out just right. Once I paid it off, I got used to living without a car payment.
I went to Cherry Hill Subaru twice. The first time should have been enough, but I did go back two years later. The first time I looked at a 2000 Subaru Impreza. It was a nice car. For some reason the dealer was trying to push me into a 5 year lease with 12,000 miles a year. The dealer herself was new, and the sales manager was taking care of everything. She was tough. If the fabled Amazon warriors had a Psy-ops component, this woman would have been their head trainer. I was dating my wife at the time (we got engaged the next morning, actually) and we took her car. I try not to take the car that I'm planning to trade in to the dealer. I don't know why, but Cherry Hill Subaru really wanted to put me in that lease. They were going to give me $4000 for the Mazda, sight unseen, when the KBB was only about $2000. The sales manager kept asking me what part of the deal I wasn't comfortable with, and I kept saying "the part where I have to take the deal right now." She kept telling me "Well, all of our banks change on Monday, so we won't have the same deals then." Normally that line means they're lying, but who has time to verify those kind of claims? It took a lot of work to pry ourselves out of there, but we did leave and I kept the Mazda. I got 4 more years out of it.
Cherry Hill Subaru's "mixed test loop" was a joke. You took a right turn onto a highly congested part of New Jersey Route 70 where you have enough room, if the car has a particularly powerful engine, to accelerate up to 35 miles per hour before taking a right into a housing area. Then you can stomp the gas to get the car up to the residential speed limit of 25 before jamming the breaks for a stop sign. A couple of twists and turns later, you come out on a major road at a busy intersection, take a right onto 70, then right back into the dealership. What a joke. If the car you are test driving is a stick shift, chances are you wouldn't get to third gear on this test loop.
We went back to Cherry Hill Subaru in 2002. My in-laws loaned us their 1995 Ford Windstar for a trip to see my parents in Texas. They let us use it for a couple of weeks after the trip as well. At that point, we had my 1993 Mazda MX3 and my wife had a 1991 Ford Escort. Both were decent cars, but owning a house with two subcompacts was tough. If we went to BJ's, it seemed that one of us had to sit on the curb with half the stuff while the other ran home. I'm obviously exaggerating, but we often had to borrow a truck when we ran to Home Depot. Now that we have kids, whenever I hear somebody start in with comments about how everybody should drive sub-compact hybrids, I always ask them "Let me guess, you're single and live in an apartment?" They always respond with "How did you know?" You don't have to watch a lot of House episodes to gain that level of insight. Just have two kids and a Sam's Club membership.
After driving that Windstar for a couple of weeks, we really came to appreciate it and I wanted one. We got something in the mail from Cherry Hill Subaru promising a toolkit of some kind just for coming in. We figured, what the heck? You can never have enough toolkits. Long story short, we ended up buying a 1999 Windstar. Here is where the screwing really took effect: when we got home, my wife was poking around on their website and found the exact same car listed for $2000 less than we paid. I printed the page and ran outside and sure enough, the VIN numbers matched. I brought this up to the dealer, and was told "a third party manages our website, and we're not responsible for them posting incorrect prices." The windshield had a crack. When I asked them to fix it, I was told "we have to guarantee state inspection. Get it inspected, and when it fails, we have to fix it." I took the car to inspection and ASKED to be failed, only to be told "I can't fail it for that little ding." Go figure. New Jersey state inspections have failed me for some of the stupidest reasons, but the one time I ask them to fail me so I can get the dealer to fix something, they won't. The windshield crack finally spilt straight across on a cold day, costing me more than $300 to replace.
I was happy to hear that Cherry Hill Subaru went out of business. I should have marked the date on my calendar so I can have a drink once a year in celebration.
My in-laws gave us the 1995 Windstar, and at this point we had 4 cars between the two of us. That was weird. The 1999 was starting to develop some problems. The power steering was going, one of the rear vent windows was stuck open, one of the power windows didn't work, and I think the transmission was failing. What can I say; it was a Ford. Some of them seem to come from the factory that way. It was the first and the last Ford I will purposely buy. Then the head gasket on the 1995 blew. Every 3.8 liter V-6 engine Ford made in 1995 blew a head gasket, but because ours was such low mileage (as of this writing in Feb 2008, it's only 88,000 miles), the gasket didn't blow until 2004, 2 years out of recall. We ended up putting out $4500 for a remanufactured engine. My wife liked the 1995 Windstar better, so we put the money out to fix it but realized that we should get rid of the 1999 before it started to cost us money. We traded it in on a 2001 Kia Sportage at Woodbury Nissan. The experience was positive, and at one point I would have bought another car from Woodbury Nissan until this day happened. That one bone-headed salesman ruined it for me and I'm not going back there.
We traded the Sportage in on a 2001 Suzuki Grand Vitara XL-7, which I was writing about previously. We bought it from Mall Suzuki. The experience wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. They drove a hard sell but also worked it out within our requirements. Nothing about it would make me go back, but on the other hand nothing would keep me away if they had a car I was particularly interested in.
This post is getting long, so I'll continue in another. There is no sense in detracting from the story with all of the background.
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