Pita and I have a new car!!!!

My old car, the '92 Taurus that I got from my grandfather, has been having serious problems lately. Right now, it barely runs, having apparently blown two head gaskets, lost the thermostat, and the water pump seal. So, we've been without our own vehicle for the last month or so. Yesterday afternoon, we drove up to a dealership in Valencia, because I was borrowing my brother's car, and needed to return it to him anyway.

We got there around 3 in the afternoon, looked around for a little while to kill time while our salesman finished up some paperwork, and then started talking seriously. We looked at a few cars, including (what we thought was) an '04 RAV4 automatic, and test drove an '05 Echo. We decided to work on the RAV4, which was the car we had been looking at for the most part. When we sat down, the salesman started filling out paperwork, and I noticed he was writing down numbers on an '05. We mentioned this, and he said that he had told us it was an '05, and that he had no '04 automatics left.

He hadn't, and we got a little annoyed, but we decided to see what would happen anyway. We started negotiating, and went back and forth for a while. We were still about $40 dollars above our absolute maximum when the closer was brought in. We explained that we had already had a better offer from another dealership, for about $30 less than we were at at that time, and that the earlier offer still wasn't good enough for us. The closer basically ignored what we were saying, and kept talking about the lower number like that was our target. When we made it clear we were not stretching up to his numbers, he tried to throw us off by talking about my work and asking questrions about pet supplies.

I made it clear that I wasn't falling for it, and asked to have my credit card returned (they used to verify the credit report), and explained that we were tired and ready to go. He said ok, and then promtply came back, without the card, and starting saying "C'mon, it's only $25! What so tough about $25?" Needless to say, we got pretty pissed, as it was: a)more than $25, and b)still well out of anything we could actually afford. I basically told him off, and Pita and I reiterated that we were more than ready to leave. By this point, my brother and father had joined us at the dealership, and dad was waiting for a ride home from us.

It seems that the general sales manager (the guy who answers to the owner) caught wind that we were unhappy and about to leave, and was not to happy with his closer. According to our salesman, who talked to dad after the sale was made, the manager said "For God's sake, sell them a car!" He actually came out to talk to us, and asked us what happened, and wanted to know what our magic number was on payments. We told him, and acknowledged that it wasn't an achievable number. He asked us what we thought we could do, and we gave him a number that what we had agreed was the most we could realistically swing, as opposed to our absolute maximum.

The manager asked if we would buy the car if he could us that number. I looked at Pita, she nodded, and I said yes. He walked away, came back a minute later, and congratulated us. Pita and I, who were certain we were about to leave having wasted about 3 hours of our time, were completely shocked. We wrapped everything up over the next hour, and drove home in our brand new RAV4.

Today, unfortunately, we've run smack into the insurance industry, and so, for at least the next few days, our car will sit until I have it insured. *sigh*