My car buying experience

So this is just a little post about my car buying experience. It’s not necessarilly a “How-To Guide” but hopefully it will give you a little advice about buying a car. Overall, I would consider my car buying experience a successful one.

Doing the research

I spent a whole lot of time doing the research on buying this vehicle. If you ever plan on buying a car, Edmunds.com is a website you absolutely must look at. I will admit that it’s Invoice prices are a little off though, but they will give you a good understanding of what you are buying.

I read tons of reviews on various different vehicles. We were looking for a small vehicle with excellent gas mileage. We were also looking for as cheap as possible. I originally looked at 3 options:

• Honda Civic
• Ford Focus
• Hyundai Elantra

All 3 of these got approx 30MPG in fuel economy. The user reviews showed that people were actually getting this in realistic driving conditions.

Hyundai Elantra

I was looking heavily into this because of two reasons: 1. Hyundai has one of the best warranties available and 2. Hyundai’s reputation has been slowly getting better and better.

I eventually decided against it because several user reviews complained about cheap plastic parts on a lot of the interior. Several reviews told of things breaking because of that which weren’t covered under warranty. It seemed to be widespread enough that I all but ruled out the Elantra.

Ford Focus

This had great pricing and a lot of available options without a high cost. I talked to a mechanic friend of mine and he warned against the Focus. He said that they tended to use plastic parts where companies like Honda would use metal parts. These parts would hold up fine until right around the 5 year mark when all of the warranty had ended. Then they would break due to excessive wear. The Honda’s would hold up because of higher quality parts.

So I also started to rule out the Focus, however it’s price looked favorable.

Honda Civic

This is the one I wanted. I was looking at the mid-level LX. It was pricier than the other options but Edmunds report on the long-term cost of owning the car made it cheaper than the other two. So this was the car I pursued.

The price shopping

I started by using Edmunds tool to contact the Fleet Department of all of the dealerships in the Phoenix area. I live 150 miles from Phoenix but the dealerships here usually charge more than down there. Regardless, I was looking on getting some pricing on the vehicles to show the dealerships up here and try to work a better deal without having to drive 150 miles.

I started with Ford and Honda. The Ford dealers were very willing to give me about $300 above invoice (Technically it was actually below invoice but I took into account the incentives). Honda on the other hand wouldn’t budge on their pricing. I got one dealer to offer $200 above invoice but I heard from various sources that this dealer liked to pull bait and switch tactics all of the time. Every other dealer in the area offered me $1000+ above invoice without budging.

This made me a little worried. I do know that due to gas prices, the smaller vehicles were becoming more popular, but I didn’t realize that they were THAT populer.

Toyota Corolla

I had completely forgot about one vehicle, the Toyota Corolla. In fact, I only remembered it because I remembered I had a friend who worked at the Toyota dealer in town. We were planning on going shopping the next day, so I quickly looked up a lot of information about the Corolla but I didn’t have time to get price quotes. It got good user reviews and great gas mileage. Also, Toyota is another name, like Honda, which I trust to make good vehicles.

Going to hell (aka the dealership)

I hate car dealerships. I hate buying cars, but we needed a new one. So we went to see my friend first at the Toyota dealer. We test drove the Corolla and loved it. It was exactly what we wanted. So we started price negotiations.

The mostly good news

I was able to talk them down to $500 above invoice. It wasn’t perfect, but doable. My friend told me the same thing that all of the Honda dealers told me; they were selling these things like hotcakes and therefore couldn’t justify underselling them when someone else would buy the car the next day. Regardless, it was doable. I wasn’t going to get too picky over $200 vs the Ford Focus which I wasn’t sold on anyways.

The bad news

Then came the bad news. They were going to give me $2500 for my 2 trade-ins. One was a ‘96 Plymouth Voyager with 177,000 miles. Kelly Blue Book rated it at around $1200. I was expecting $1000. The other was a 2000 Audi A6 with quite a fair amount of body damage, but it was overall in good running order. Kelly Blue Book put it in Fair condition at $6500. With the body damage, I expected between $4000 and $5000. $2500 for both was rediculous.

I do believe my friend tried his best because he said he honestly didn’t think that they could help me get where we wanted to be as far as the price goes. He suggested trying to sell them on Craigslist and see if I can get what I wanted for them that way and then come back.

It’s OK to walk away

So I walked out. I was a little disappointed but that’s life. We were going to go to the Honda dealer next but my wife was feeling sort of sick and we had already spent 3+ hours at the Toyota dealer. So we went home, aiming to do it again the next weekend.

I put both vehicles on Craigslist. I put the Voyager for $999 and the Audi for $4500. The Voyager sold the next day for $900. So far so good. The Audi had only one call. A lady came, looked at the Audi, and said she didn’t want a vehicle with that much body damage so she walked away. She didn’t even bother to give me another offer. That was depressing.

After a while I began to think about the Audi. I figured anyone who is going to buy an Audi really wants a high quality vehicle. You just don’t buy an Audi that looks like crap. The only people that would buy sich a vehicle would be a college student who wants an Audi, but can’t afford one and therefore settles. Since it’s summer time, all of the stupid college kids are out of town. So there really is no market for my beat up Audi. That realization was even more depressing.

The phone call

My Toyota friend called me back on Tuesday. I told him that I sold the van but hadn’t sold the Audi yet. He told me he had talked to his manager and would offer me $3000 for the Audi as a trade in. It wasn’t the $4000+ I was hoping for, but frankly, with all of the $1200 repairs I had done in the past year, I was willing to part with it.

We went in on Wednesday, and signed the paperwork. We are now the proud owners of a 2009 Toyota Corolla.

What to do differently

Here’s some stuff I would have done differently.

1. I should have gone to the Honda dealer in town. I really should have. It would have been worth a look. They may have offered me more for my trade. They may not have. I really don’t know because I didn’t find out.

2. I should have researched barely used cars a little more. I did do some research for ‘06 and ‘07 Honda Civics. In the entire Phoenix area, there were 5 listed at the time on Autotrader.com. Each of those 5 vehicles were within $1000-$2000 of a brand new Civic. In my opinion, it would have been worth the new car, but I still should have done more research. An ‘06 with 20,000 miles would be a great buy due to vehicle depreciation, though considering our down payment and trade in, I’m sure we could sell the Corolla right now at close to dealer prices and make some money back. These fuel efficient cars are selling quickly and easily.

It was cheaper to buy a new car

I did some math to compare a new car to keeping my old cars. First off, my wife and I had been car pooling for the last 6 months with no problems. Only once or twice had we needed a 2nd vehicle.

The van needed some engine work on it which was quoted at $1300 to repair. The Audi just had $1200 put into it for a repair 2 months ago. Between those 2 repairs, we are looking at $200/month if we spread those costs out over the entire year.

Also, since we had been driving the Audi more often (it was in better shape than the van), we had been paying close to $400 per month in gas. The Audi was averaging about 20.1MPG and required Premium Gas. The Corolla so far is averaging 33.2MPG and takes regular gas. We’ve had for 1 week so far and haven’t needed to fill the gas tank yet. The Audi needed to be filled once a week. Based on approximate figures so far, it looks like we will save $200 per month on gas.

So that gives us an approximate savings of $400 a month. Realistically we are saving $300 per month because we weren’t going to fix the van but just let it sit. Our new monthly payment on the Corolla is $265 per month, and since we got a 7 year/100,000 mile warranty, I won’t have to worry about fixing it for a while. Overall this gives us an actual savings of $35 per month to buy a new car versus keeping the old car.

So I know that was long, but hopefully it may help you on a future car purchase of your own.