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chhotiiI am going to buy a new car. I know, I have been saying this for years. But, now, really now, this time for real. Imminently. Within days, hopefully. I have been going through these love-hate cycles with my VW Golf. I love it; then something breaks, and I fret about fixing it vs. replacing it, and whatever is wrong drives me batty, and I hate it; and then I fix it, thinking hey it will increase the eventual resale value if it's fixed, and meanwhile I can be suffering less; and then when it's fixed, I love it again. So I don't sell it. And then something breaks, again, and then I hate it again.
At this point my relationship with the Golf is in the depths of hate. It's still an adorable, zippy little hatchback. But, oh, man. The air conditioning is broken, which has been causing severe suffering these past few days. The radio has stopped working, again, mysteriously. There's some glitch in the electrical system that, when the car is locked and alarmed, causes the alarm to spontaneously start to go off, over and over again, much to my embarrassment; so I have taken to leaving the car unlocked, which means that I can't leave any bags or anything valuable in the car, so I wind up lugging the backpack full of laptop and other Apple products and paperwork everywhere. The upholstery smells bad. With all this going on, given that I had planned to replace the car before it got to AC season, I never did replace the passenger-side mirror. Just to round out the list, and make the point that this car is not worth trying to re-sell, I'll mention that the body is all scratched, dinged, and banged up, and part of the front bumper is held on with duct tape; there are grape smoothie stains on the ceiling; and with the demise of ABJ, there goes my hopes of getting a print-out of some of the car's service records.
Here's what I've figured out so far about what car to buy next:
Make, model: The Honda Fit. I love little hatchbacks. It's adorable. Everyone I know who has one sings its praises. Honda makes great products.
Trim level: Probably the cheapest possible, the LX. Do not need the bells and whistles. Really, really don't need leather seats, god no.
Color: Hopefully blue. The Fit comes in a bunch of really boring colors. What ever happened to the pumpkin pie orange color? Why don't they branch out and do something nifty like purple? *sigh* Well, of the rather boring options available, blue is the least bad. Black is right out. Gray is way, way too boring. White is "meh"; doesn't it show dirt? Red might be too bright and jangly for my nerves and yellow might be too bring and jangly for Sophia's nerves.
Here's what's unspecified but doesn't have to be decided on yet:
Type of transmission: I am utterly undecided about whether I would prefer the manual transmission or the CVT (automatic). The manual transmission is cheaper, is simpler and therefore less likely to break expensively, and stick can be fun to drive. But if I got an automatic, my mother could drive it, which could make logistics easier sometimes; and furthermore, they claim that the CVT actually gets better gas mileage than the manual. So, I am happy going either way. I will go with whatever is available in blue from the most reasonable dealer.
Model year: I don't think the 2015 and 2016 are much different? 2016, unlike 2015, is not a major overhaul year. OTOH the 2015's are likely to be discounted now that the 2016's are coming out? OTOH the only ones left in inventory might all be grey? Again, I'll let that be determined by price and availability.
Things I haven't figured out yet:
What to do with the Golf: Really, the only options I'm looking at are trade it in, or donate it to WBUR. No, I'm not interested in selling it on Craigslist or the TDI forums. I want either the convenience of a trade-in or the karmic boost of donating it. If you think that selling the Golf privately via classified ads is such a fantastically profitable idea that it's worth the hassle, then make me an offer for it, and you can do that and pocket the profit. I'll think harder about how much the karma boost is worth to me monetarily if anyone is serious about this idea. But did you see the annoying list of what is wrong with this car, above? I imagine trying to sell the car would be endless annoying iterations of people trying to talk me down from an already-discounted price after test driving, arguing "but the AC is broken", even if I say, up front, the AC is broken and the price is non-negotiable. And, no, I'm not going to fix the AC etc. to sell the car. Based on my experience of selling the Scion, which had nothing wrong with it other than cosmetic issues with the bumpers, I would guess that the profit I would make from fixing up the Golf and then re-selling it would be about 37 cents. Realistically, if I fixed the obvious flaws with the car, then I would just keep driving it.
I don't understand the trade-in thing. I tried to sell the Scion for cash to the Toyota dealer. They offered me $500 for the Scion, which was newer than the Golf and had nothing really wrong with it. This is supposedly after they had called around to other people whose core business would be older used vehicles. All those people, all over New England. I don't know how much of what went into the (very insulting) offer of $500 was "we don't have time to thoroughly examine this car mechanically so this factors in the risk that it might be nearly non-functional" vs. "the poor desperate widow who doesn't know much about cars should be easy to take advantage of". But it can't have been that much of the latter because when I proved myself not desperate enough to take the $500 why didn't they call me back later with a better offer? If they could've sold it instantly to some auction house for $2500 then why didn't they take the instant $500 they would get by offering me $2000? Anyway, I figure that if the Scion was really only worth $500 to the dealer, then the Golf would be worth, sheesh, I don't know, $250? Let's say $250. And, let's say, to keep the math simple, that they would be willing to go as low as $16,250 on the car that I want. Then I would think that they price that they would offer with the trade-in would be $16,000. (value of the car they give me) - (value of the car I give them). That's bullshit. The karmic boost of donating to the radio station is worth more than $250 to me. I would rather pay $16,250 cash and donate the old car and get the karmic boost. (And the tax deduction.) But, people say, you get more for your car from the dealer as a trade-in than you would selling it to them. So they would offer me (hypothetically) $250 cash for the Golf but value it at $1250 as a trade-in? Why? To sweeten the deal, and get you to buy, people say. But why not just sweeten the deal, without involving this old car that they then have to deal with? If they are willing to drop another K to "sweeten the deal"-- why couldn't one haggle them down to $15,250 straight cash? I don't understand. I suspect that dealers like the trade-in thing because it makes the negotiations more confusing, which they take advantage of.
How to get the best price, in general:
I have seen ads on TV for websites that promise that if you shop through them you will get the best price. I don't know how much of a gimmick these are. Edmunds.com wants me to put in all kinds of contact information before comparing dealer prices on-line. Smells like gimmick to me. They also say, for example, "MSRP $16,610 / Average Price Paid $16,524". So let me get this straight. People do all kinds of negotiating just to get a price that is only a hair less than the MSRP. They must, because if you click on "inventory", you get a list of cars that are all rather more than the MSRP. Where are the cars that are less than MSRP? Nobody really pays the MSRP, right? I guess you go in, they have cars with outrageous prices, you say "I'm not paying that much," and out come the ooh discounts and shiny deals? Why don't they just post the actual price to begin with? I am confused.
At this point my relationship with the Golf is in the depths of hate. It's still an adorable, zippy little hatchback. But, oh, man. The air conditioning is broken, which has been causing severe suffering these past few days. The radio has stopped working, again, mysteriously. There's some glitch in the electrical system that, when the car is locked and alarmed, causes the alarm to spontaneously start to go off, over and over again, much to my embarrassment; so I have taken to leaving the car unlocked, which means that I can't leave any bags or anything valuable in the car, so I wind up lugging the backpack full of laptop and other Apple products and paperwork everywhere. The upholstery smells bad. With all this going on, given that I had planned to replace the car before it got to AC season, I never did replace the passenger-side mirror. Just to round out the list, and make the point that this car is not worth trying to re-sell, I'll mention that the body is all scratched, dinged, and banged up, and part of the front bumper is held on with duct tape; there are grape smoothie stains on the ceiling; and with the demise of ABJ, there goes my hopes of getting a print-out of some of the car's service records.
Here's what I've figured out so far about what car to buy next:
Make, model: The Honda Fit. I love little hatchbacks. It's adorable. Everyone I know who has one sings its praises. Honda makes great products.
Trim level: Probably the cheapest possible, the LX. Do not need the bells and whistles. Really, really don't need leather seats, god no.
Color: Hopefully blue. The Fit comes in a bunch of really boring colors. What ever happened to the pumpkin pie orange color? Why don't they branch out and do something nifty like purple? *sigh* Well, of the rather boring options available, blue is the least bad. Black is right out. Gray is way, way too boring. White is "meh"; doesn't it show dirt? Red might be too bright and jangly for my nerves and yellow might be too bring and jangly for Sophia's nerves.
Here's what's unspecified but doesn't have to be decided on yet:
Type of transmission: I am utterly undecided about whether I would prefer the manual transmission or the CVT (automatic). The manual transmission is cheaper, is simpler and therefore less likely to break expensively, and stick can be fun to drive. But if I got an automatic, my mother could drive it, which could make logistics easier sometimes; and furthermore, they claim that the CVT actually gets better gas mileage than the manual. So, I am happy going either way. I will go with whatever is available in blue from the most reasonable dealer.
Model year: I don't think the 2015 and 2016 are much different? 2016, unlike 2015, is not a major overhaul year. OTOH the 2015's are likely to be discounted now that the 2016's are coming out? OTOH the only ones left in inventory might all be grey? Again, I'll let that be determined by price and availability.
Things I haven't figured out yet:
What to do with the Golf: Really, the only options I'm looking at are trade it in, or donate it to WBUR. No, I'm not interested in selling it on Craigslist or the TDI forums. I want either the convenience of a trade-in or the karmic boost of donating it. If you think that selling the Golf privately via classified ads is such a fantastically profitable idea that it's worth the hassle, then make me an offer for it, and you can do that and pocket the profit. I'll think harder about how much the karma boost is worth to me monetarily if anyone is serious about this idea. But did you see the annoying list of what is wrong with this car, above? I imagine trying to sell the car would be endless annoying iterations of people trying to talk me down from an already-discounted price after test driving, arguing "but the AC is broken", even if I say, up front, the AC is broken and the price is non-negotiable. And, no, I'm not going to fix the AC etc. to sell the car. Based on my experience of selling the Scion, which had nothing wrong with it other than cosmetic issues with the bumpers, I would guess that the profit I would make from fixing up the Golf and then re-selling it would be about 37 cents. Realistically, if I fixed the obvious flaws with the car, then I would just keep driving it.
I don't understand the trade-in thing. I tried to sell the Scion for cash to the Toyota dealer. They offered me $500 for the Scion, which was newer than the Golf and had nothing really wrong with it. This is supposedly after they had called around to other people whose core business would be older used vehicles. All those people, all over New England. I don't know how much of what went into the (very insulting) offer of $500 was "we don't have time to thoroughly examine this car mechanically so this factors in the risk that it might be nearly non-functional" vs. "the poor desperate widow who doesn't know much about cars should be easy to take advantage of". But it can't have been that much of the latter because when I proved myself not desperate enough to take the $500 why didn't they call me back later with a better offer? If they could've sold it instantly to some auction house for $2500 then why didn't they take the instant $500 they would get by offering me $2000? Anyway, I figure that if the Scion was really only worth $500 to the dealer, then the Golf would be worth, sheesh, I don't know, $250? Let's say $250. And, let's say, to keep the math simple, that they would be willing to go as low as $16,250 on the car that I want. Then I would think that they price that they would offer with the trade-in would be $16,000. (value of the car they give me) - (value of the car I give them). That's bullshit. The karmic boost of donating to the radio station is worth more than $250 to me. I would rather pay $16,250 cash and donate the old car and get the karmic boost. (And the tax deduction.) But, people say, you get more for your car from the dealer as a trade-in than you would selling it to them. So they would offer me (hypothetically) $250 cash for the Golf but value it at $1250 as a trade-in? Why? To sweeten the deal, and get you to buy, people say. But why not just sweeten the deal, without involving this old car that they then have to deal with? If they are willing to drop another K to "sweeten the deal"-- why couldn't one haggle them down to $15,250 straight cash? I don't understand. I suspect that dealers like the trade-in thing because it makes the negotiations more confusing, which they take advantage of.
How to get the best price, in general:
I have seen ads on TV for websites that promise that if you shop through them you will get the best price. I don't know how much of a gimmick these are. Edmunds.com wants me to put in all kinds of contact information before comparing dealer prices on-line. Smells like gimmick to me. They also say, for example, "MSRP $16,610 / Average Price Paid $16,524". So let me get this straight. People do all kinds of negotiating just to get a price that is only a hair less than the MSRP. They must, because if you click on "inventory", you get a list of cars that are all rather more than the MSRP. Where are the cars that are less than MSRP? Nobody really pays the MSRP, right? I guess you go in, they have cars with outrageous prices, you say "I'm not paying that much," and out come the ooh discounts and shiny deals? Why don't they just post the actual price to begin with? I am confused.
