I decided Friday that I would go look at some cars this weekend. Since the TT is getting a bit tired in its old age, I was considering getting something under warranty for a daily driver. So, in the past 27 hours I have visited 3 car dealerships. I drove 1 car. So, this is more a review of the dealerships than the cars. I do seem to have a talent for ending up with the good looking younger sales guys. I guess they kinda self segregate by age (or at least appearance of age, since I think the last 2 were pretty significantly younger than me - I did get carded last weekend, after all).
Follow up:
The first visit was on a whim on my way home Friday evening. I swung by Metro VW in Irving. I talked to Blake Erdley. He was a really nice guy, seemed pretty knowledgeable. At first looking at their lot I didn’t see any Jetta Sportwagen TDIs, it turns out they hide them around back. They had several. I think it was 2 or 3 each of white, silver & black, plus one red. My color of choice is Laser Blue, which seems pretty rare, I think the red is likely my second choice. I explained to Blake right off that I wasn’t looking to purchase immediately, that I’m still in the research phase & told him I knew I was his least favorite type of customer. He replied that I was his manager’s least favorite, but that he didn’t mind at all. He went & got a key & we did the little walk around & then he drove it out of the lot to their nearby service center, where we traded places. I fully expected him to need a copy of my license & such, but he didn’t even ask. In fact he didn’t get any contact info for me at all.
As for the drive, the TDI is pretty nice. It obviously doesn’t have as much oomph as the TT, but it was decent. & of course the ride was a lot smoother & quieter. Not only has that platform improved a lot (the Jetta is on the successor to the chassis the TT was built on) but this one was new, 125,000 miles will take its toll (not to mention the lowering springs & loud exhaust). When we got back we talked a bit more & he wanted to check out the wheels that I have on the TT (they are actually from the previous gen Jetta GLI). All in all it was a good experience and if I buy a VW in the near future I’m pretty sure it will be from him.
Today I didn’t leave the house to go do anything until about 6:45. I wanted to try to drive the Honda Insight & Toyota Prius. I went to John Eagle Honda first, since they close @ 8. The first guy I ran into was with another customer, but he went & got another “Sales Consultant” (the VW guy was a VW Specialist). I dealt with Richard Meneely. He was a nice guy with a “you might be a redneck” desk calendar and a tattoo (don’t even remember what it was, some script of some sort). He got my info & copied my drivers license, then went to get some keys so we could go for a test drive. It turns out the normal Insight they use for demos was out, or missing or something. The other 2 they had on the lot had dead batteries. In a hybrid. I find that incredibly amusing. The car has a 100.8 volt, 5.75 Ah battery for the hybrid system. It really needs an auto-jumpstart or something. Especially since on most of those systems the electric motor is the starter, which runs on the 100V system. So, no Insight drive for me. I did get a spiffy round brochure though.
My second stop today was Sport City Toyota, another John Eagle dealership. The last time I went here was to look at a used MR2, the one that I did a donut with in a church parking lot with the sales guy in the passenger seat. That was a fun car. Walking into Sport City was quite different than the Honda store. For one, country was playing (I guess we were close to Mesquite), for another I had to look for a sales person, there was no one at the desk & one sales guy walked right by me. There were 2 guys in red shirts talking at a table, so I walked in their general direction, so they could see me and Jim (Jimmy) Bricker came to ask me if I had been helped. Another nice, younger guy, this time from Ohio. He was interesting to deal with, he had that standard form to get my info … name, address, phone, what I was looking for, what I wanted to pay … standard dealer BS. But he was apologetic about having to ask the questions, especially since I, again, started out letting him know that I wasn’t looking to drive one home today. He basically blamed it all on the manager. Which seemed pretty true. Anyway, they actually only had one 2010 Prius left and really didn’t want to let anyone test drive it unless they thought they would sell it to them, which I told them I wouldn’t. It was all the standard dealer BS. I talked to Jimmy, another sales guy (the Prius expert) & their manager. The manager pulled out that “what would it take to get you in this car today” line. He also tried to convince me that $1000 over sticker was a great deal. The hang tag on this particular Prius (it was a Prius IV, in gold with leather) was $33,900. He was willing to let me take it home for $29,000. MSRP was $27,something. I’m all for capitalism & getting what you can while you can, but I special ordered my TT and got it for $500 under MSRP. & it wasn’t an econobox. Though I guess the new Prii aren’t either, this one was pretty loaded. But, if I was planning on buying a car this weekend, dealing with him would have made me call up Blake & tell him I was on my way over, since the TDI had a smidge lower MSRP ($27,619) & he said they actually had some room to deal. Not only that, but I can still get the $1300 tax credit on the Jetta. That would have put the Jetta about 3k lower than the Prius.
Today was much less satisfactory than yesterday. I already was leaning toward a Jetta, but I really wanted to try out the competition too. This really discouraged me. It also makes me a bit concerned since I was planning on taking the TT to the John Eagle body shop to get the work I need done taken care of. I hope they are better organized & less shady than their sales counterparts.
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