car woes (continued) part one

in our last adventure, we went out to look at Honda Civics, and we found them to be well out of our range. So we went home and called it a night. After an hour or two on the internet, we discovered that the tiny, underappreciated Hyundai Accent, starts out at around $9888, and garners some suprising accolades from various sources, like autoweb.com, and cartalk.com) All sources seemed to think that the extensive Hyundai factory warranty, which is a simply unheard of 11Year/110K Miles, made all of the minor imperfections in the vehicle worthwhile. So after some searching, we found a Hyundai dealer in Bellevue, (Sound Mazda, or more accurately, "Sound Mazda, Suzuki and Hyundai." It pays to be a jack of all trades, I guess.) Whose website promised that the 2001 model would run us $10,448 with a base option package that includes automatic transmission. (Check it yourself, www.soundmazda.com) So we set out in the worst rainstorm of the year to test drive and inspect the vehicles, and see if they kept their money anywhere near thier mouth. (Or at least near their website.) We were hoping to find a 2001 model since special financing is available on these (6.9%) until the end of August. (According to Hyundai.) When we arrived, all of the salesmen were lined up outside like those long-haired hoodlums on the corner, smoking and joking. All except one, who seemed to be the little dog on the porch. The others looked at us and our battered Escort, and seemed to shrug us off instantly on Little Dog, who rather tentatively approached us, (I thought he might run away at any moment.) Instead, he showed us the Accents on the lot (All 2002 models, for which there is NO special financing.) Oddly all the stickers on the lot started at about a thousand more than the website and competetor's sites, even for the 2002. In addition, a second sticker added another two thousand dollars in dealer costs. (Advertising, Dealer Transportation, Dealer Prep, Dishonesty Waiver, Stupid Tax, and the like.) We looked at that oddly, but Little Dog rushed us on to other vehicles any time we looked like we were inspecting things too closely, and when we finally looked like we were going to get to speak to each other, he suggested a test drive of one of the base models. All the while, a tall man from the row of Usual Suspects tailed us at a discreet distance (or at least, I assume he thought it was a discreet distance in his private detective fantasies... as it was he was as conspicuous as a bird in a punchbowl.) So we took the little Hyundai around town and up onto the freeway. The car was noisy and rough around the edges, but not much more so than the used Civics. It would truly be a bargain for 8K, but rather outrageous for 13K. After the drive, we asked about the possibility for a search of Hyundai dealers nearby for the 2001 base model plus automatic for $10,448. Since Little Dog couldn't handle this level of transaction, he rushed us inside, and then went to fetch his "Supervisor."

car woes (continued) part 2

Little Dog then sat with us at the supervisor's desk, and proceeded to collapse in a silent pile of rumination and quiet sobbing upon seeing a small stuffed Pokemon doll. (Later we learned that Little Dog's ex-girlfriend had taken a much larger, more expensive version of this doll, plus a large stuffed "Pikachu" from him, and had not given them back upon thier subsequent breakup. Such are the wages of love, my friends.) In any case, shortly a trap door in the middle of the floor opened and the supervisor, our New Best Buddy No.1, appeared in a puff of oily smoke, and half hearted flames. The man was an uneven mixture of every new car salesman cliche in the world, with a few of the common loan shark cliches thrown in for good measure. He was literally the slickest man alive. He was so slick that he was coated in Number Nine Ball Bearing Oil. After about fifteen minutes of his nickle ante Machiavellianisms I began to long for the quiet and subtle machinations of the Lieutenant Castillo cloning accident from Honda of Bellevue. Fortunately, a little known aspect of my wife's personality emerged. Somewhere in her southern fried families' past, there must be a Yankee Trader in the woodpile, because she cracked this five and dime huckster like a nut. She demanded an explainations of the costs, and our supervisor produced the dealer invoice, and when it stated $10,499 as it should have, instead of $14K which is what their price was with the second stickers added in, she demanded a complete and itemized list of the extra costs, and a complete explaination of each. Finally, she realized that the man was literally taking items from above the total, and adding them back in on top of the total on the invoice, like so:

Subtotal           :   $9,749
___________________
Transportation :      $500
Advertising      :       $250
____________________
Total                :  $10,499  

Quoth Mr. Machiavelli: "Now, as you can see on the invoice, the total is $10,499 but you need to add that transportation and those advertising costs there onto that total for this puppy, giving us $11,249, and we still need to add "Dealer Prep" and "Street Value" to that."
Once that came out into the open, we simply stopped listening, in the end I think he offered us the car we wanted at a thousand dollar markup and a 7% finance rate and a $500 "Search fee", but by that time he could have been offering us an Arista Records recording contract and a "Fiddle Made of Gold" and I wouldn't have listened. As soon as we could, we broke for the door, a stiff arm block was required to stop the tall man from throwing an illegal clip our way ("excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear..." yeah, right, good car dealer bad car dealer? No thank you.) All the way home, Mystery and I quoted lines from "Fargo" at each other. ("Yeah, that Trucoat. They put that on at the factory you know. I'm gonna talk to my boss, and he's not gonna be happy about that.")