Cruisin'

The title only works if you listen with your arcade ear for the digital voice on that car racing game.

In any case, I've got a new car. Specifically a brand new electric blue 2005 PT Cruiser. It's a little over two weeks old now, with almost 1200 miles on it. I'm loving it. I was originally looking for a minivan or SUV, but wasn't really excited by anything save perhaps the overpriced Nissan Murano. Then by some strange coincidence, three different people recommended the PT within a two day period of time. That was wiggy enough to make me take a look.

I poked around the Chrysler website, checked out a few car review sites, and everything was pretty positive. Except for the fact that I've always thought it was ugly as sin. Then I checked back the next day - not so ugly. Then Chrysler decides to do the employee pricing thing, and then, it's looking pretty nice. So I figure out the best dealership in the area that has what I want and head out.

On first pass, I wasn't impressed with the salesman. I've got a pet peeve about phones and customer service - if you are assisting me (and your paycheck is dependant on my willingness to buy), answering your cell phone is a good way to annoy me, especially if it's a personal call and you don't make any attempt to excuse yourself. I knew exactly which car I wanted (dealership web developers, take note: online inventory made me pick this dealership instead of one closer to home), and he found it pretty quickly. Then he starts pointing out the features of the car - which is cool, because the whole point of the visit was to actually sit in one and see how it worked - by reading the sticker - which is not cool. Okay, red flags start going off.

But then, something changed, and I'm not sure what. Maybe it was the fact that this dealership is set up like a parking garage, and the guy trusted me to drive the slalom course of new cars down to the ground level. Maybe because he started to loosen up and realized I was probably an easy sale. Or maybe he was just a little nervous himself. When we found out he'd only had this job for the past seven weeks, I became a little more forgiving. I drove it around and it was pretty much what I wanted in a car. He had the sale.

Of course, the financing piece of the puzzle was a freakin' bear. Why does this stuff have to be so hard? When I say I don't want meteor strike coverage, give up. When I say I can get a certain rate for a certain period from my credit union, don't insult my intelligence by claiming you're giving me a better rate by increasing the period by another year and knocking two hundredths of a percentage off. I can do math.

Anyway, everything worked out fine, and I drove out of there in my new Cruiser, all of 23 miles on it. A thousand miles later, and I'm still very happy with it.

Aside #1: My previous car was a '95 Dodge Neon I bought new in May of 1994. My car was the first Neon in the Aqua paint job sold at my dealership. I put about 188,000 miles on it and drove it pretty much into the ground, and maybe put all of about a thousand dollars in repairs into it during its entire lifespan (not counting things that wear like tires and such). That car owed me nothing, and still managed to get me $1500 in trade at the dealership. I salute you, friend, and appreciate your service.

Aside #2: The salesman? His previous job was a nurse caring for babies on life support. That's a freakin' emotional job if I ever heard one. He put something like 25 years into it, and was starting to feel beat down, emotionally. I guess car sales was a little less stressful. We're cool now, though I need to get the dang survey in the mail soon so he'll stop calling me to make sure everything is alright (because his paycheck is based on how I rate the sale).

Aside #3: The whole family loves the car. Patti still thinks it's ugly, but the boys love riding in it.

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Link of the moment: Tangentially related to cars, test your sanity.