Another Car

We are officially a two car family now. Saturday night we bought a 2005 Hyundai Elantra. It was such a process. After the last car buying experience we decided to do some research. We thought that an elantra would be a better car for us than a focus, but a focus would work too. After the experience we had at the Hyundai dealership, we decided to try another dealership. We drove for 20 minutes and they didn't have anything. So we drove back and went back to the Ford Dealership. We thought we might find a salesman that was more interested to sell us a car. Nope, the salesman just gave us a card, and said that they were closing.


We still had 40 minutes until Joshua needed to eat, so Brian talked me into going to the Hyundai place we went last week. This is the one that had the pushy steriotipical salesman. He recognized us and took us back to the "perfect car" he had shown us last week. It happened to be an Elantra. Brian told the salesman he didn't want to play games and didn't want to waste time driving it, if a price agreement was not possible. Brian gave a low bid--around private party value--, and the salesman said that was a good enough bid to make it worth our time to drive.

Side note: They also had a focus there. Brian gave a private party value bid on that one too, but they said they had more than that put into the car. We wondered why it was our fault that the dealership spent too much money to buy the car. The salesman said he didn't care which car we bought, but I think he was lying. I think he got more money out of the elantra, but oh well.

Anyway Brian drove the car. I didn't drive it because I do not know how to drive a manual, so I just sat in the back with Joshua. When we got back, Joshua was starving. I went to feed him, and Brian and I decided that we liked the car if we could get it for a good price. Brian went in and offered a few hundred dollars over his original offer. The manager counter offered with an extremely high offer. Brian thought that the negotiation wasn't going anywhere, so he walked out. We were about to put Joshua in the carseat when the salesman and the manager came running out to our car. This time they counter offered right near Brian's offer, and so we took the deal.

We spent the next two hours doing paper work, and signing up for a loan. Ugg. Before this the only loan we had was a student loan, and we paid it off before the interest kicked in. Anyway Joshua was exhuasted, but he held together until the drive home, where he just sobbed. It was so sad.

But we finally have a car and learned some lessons along the way. First, Brian took a little notebook and wrote the value of the cars/models we were interested in for various years and mileages. That way we knew what a fair price was, and didn't have to rack our brain in the middle of things. Also, getting in the car to leave seemed to bring the price down quite a bit. Finally Brian wished he hadn't upped his offer right away, but the difference that would have been made would have been minimal.

So now we have two cars. Hopefully it lasts a good long time, maybe so that Joshua can drive it someday. I will post picturs of it later.