Car Shopping

A friend of mine is in the market for a car because in about a month, she'll be a junior and allowed to have one. Since she knows I like cars, and spent a lot of time restoring one with my dad, she asked for my opinion on a few cars she was considering. One thing led to another, and I ended up going car shopping with her yesterday. For the most part, it wasn't that eventful. We stopped by a private owner's house and checked out a car that suited her pretty well, was in great shape, and had a pretty good price.

We still thought it was a good idea to keep looking around in case we could find a little better deal. We stopped by a no-haggle lot and checked out something that wasn't as good. The did have a pretty nice 1974 Z-28 Camaro that I became infatuated with, but I'm not in the market for a $14,000 muscle car that's drag-strip ready. It had a beautiful custom paint job, high performance engine, and big back tires. I thought about asking to test drive it, but the guys at the dealership were nice and I didn't want to waste their time when I wasn't even considering buying it.

After we left that dealership, we wandered on to another and checked out a few cars they had to offer. None of them were what my friend was looking for, but I found a little 1990 Mustang 5.0 GT convertible in decent shape. Sticker price: $5,000 Book value: $1,700. I find myself wanting to buy it, play with it, and see if I could turn it around for a profit. That'd only work if I could buy it reasonably though... Anyway, we didn't find a car like my friend wanted so we moved on down the road until we found another dealership and wandered in.

This dealership felt a little more like the cliche. Sure the guy was nice, but the whole deal started to feel sleazy, and I noticed a lot of the sneaky car-salesman tactics that I've read about. The guy we talked to mainly tried to get to know us, and introduced us to his boss/manager (I'm guessing). Boss/manager guy was friendly and when he saw my old car, we got to chatting about classics a little bit. When my friend said that one of her requirements was a leather interior, B/M guy said "I'm, the same way. I don't usually tell people that but...."

That was the point when I started to notice the sleaze factor of this place. This guy was definitely distorting the truth and trying to build the image of a close relationship. Why would he share something that he "usually doesn't tell people" with two folks he's known for 30 seconds? We test drove one car that was in poor shape, and then moved on to a little nicer one. To start, they kept us waiting while they tried to find the keys for the first car and tried to track down the second car. Apparently keeping the customer waiting is another salesman tactic, and I have a hard time believing that they just lost an entire car.

It didn't seem too underhanded until we ended up at the negotiation table. That's when our salesman pulled out the "four square" sheet. He also said "So if we can work out an agreeable number, have we earned your business today?" I had read about this "four square" sheet and knew that the idea of this paper was to bombard you with numbers, confuse you, and try to knock you off guard. Asking if they would "earn your business" was their way of trying to make you feel committed.

As expected, our sales-guy walked into the B/M guy's office to get a price, and came back with a ridiculously high number. He had already asked what my friend's price range was, and she had told him under $10,000. The price he came back with: $12,635. Detailed out to the last digit so it didn't look made up, above book value, and out of her stated range. The whole situation mirrored exactly an article I had read about car guy tactics. Apparently the first number is supposed to be insultingly high so that every offer after that seems more reasonable by comparison.

When we shot that first number down, we also told him about another car my friend had found on craigslist. Same year, make, and model with a few more miles for $8500. We told the guy this and he came back with B/M guy.
B/M guy: "I just realized that there's a different way we can sell this. Since it just arrived, we can just run it through our inspection, get it detailed and you could buy it for $8,500 plus dealer fees."
It was funny how all of a sudden, the absolute lowest they could go was the same price of a comparable vehicle. The other vehicle though was in significantly better shape, so it still didn't seem like a good deal. All the while, they're writing the prices they throw out there in big numbers across the foursquare sheet and scribbling out the old prices. Within two trips to the office, the sheet is covered in scribbles, folded, and still has numbers that we both know are too high. The sales guy and B/M guy keep asking my friend to initial next to the numbers agreeing to buy if they can reach an agreeable price.

She was hesitant to do that, but I let her know that even if she signed in blood, it wouldn't be legally binding. After jockeying like this for maybe a half hour or 45 minutes, we both got tired of the sleaze. We figured that she had already found a car she'd be happy with, in good shape, for a good price, so we didn't need to deal with this b.s. It was weird walking out of the dealership because we both felt dirty for the next hour just at having dealt with that crap.

It was just interesting to see all these sleazy sales tactics in action after I had read about them and could see through them. So if you're ever going to buy a car, I'd suggest looking through some articles on the internet about dealing with car salesmen, doing your research, and bringing someone with you.