Car Shopping

Well, the grocery getter is gone. The '97 Voyager that was totaled last week was towed away yesterday. Disposed of like an old pair of shoes. Junked. Off to the glue factory. Kaput. Kicked to the curb. Too bad. That car served us well for over 6 years. No major problems until the transmission rebuild last July. Maybe we could have at least given it a decent burial. But it's off to the crusher for her. Shame really. It was all paid for too!

So, this afternoon we went out car shopping. I knew before I went that there are just too many cars to choose from and too many people and places just dying to sell them to you. One of the cars that we drove was a '05 Chevy Impala. 29,000 miles with all the ususal bells and whistles. Nice car. Looked a little worn though. Drove ok. We really couldn't pick up on anything obviously wrong with the car. Back to the dealer. Took a long time for the salesman to actually let us know what the price was. Almost like it was a secret. Finally, he came clean. $13,998. But with the 'Bigshot Dealer Discount" of $3000 the price was $10,998. What a sport. We wouldn't commit to buying. We went out with the specific goal of driving cars to get a feel for what we want, not to buy a car today. When we were leaving, a senior salesman said "What if the car was $9,000. Would you buy it?" Nope. Not buying today. Hmmmm, they dropped the price $4000 in a matter of minutes. We still didn't buy the car. We took the salesman's card and left. We'll definitely consider going back there to buy. They didn't do anything wrong. They were just doing their jobs, and that's to sell us a car. And they certainly were nice enough people. We're just not buying today. Off to the next dealer.