Sides of the deal
To the best of my knowledge I'm not currently in the market for a new car. We have more than enough payments remaining on our main vehicle, and our secondary one, while it's been down for a while, appears to simply need a little work. We haven't needed it recently, and my schedule's been too hectic to get it back on the road. Besides, with gasoline prices being what they are we're generally better off with only one vehicle burning it.
I've never been a car person.
Waaaaay back in high school, as what most considered to be that magic 16th birthday approached, the topics of driving and cars became major, in some cases primary, points of conversation. Some simply wanted the independence, most probably wanted the increase in dating potential that came from that mobility, and some were obsessed with particular vehicles. For better or worse, I wasn't in any of these categories. I saw the headaches - added costs and responsibilities, and that's even before insurance costs would be added in.
Looking back on myself as my 16th birthday approached and passed I can credit myself with realizing that the culture was trying to push me out of a phase of my life I'd never get back to, into one I didn't really want. There were few places I wanted to go that I could reach easily enough on foot - I was a natural distance hiker, knocking out 5-10 miles strolls to places without any thought, and often going 15 or more miles that way. If I wanted to go farther - say, into Philadelphia, well, I could walk to and from the train station.
Besides, as those late-middle teen years came into play, it turned out to be much easier landing a girlfriend with a car. Hey, she enjoyed driving, and I still ended up paying for dinners and movies.
Even today all I really want a vehicle to do is get me from A to B in reasonable comfort and safety. I don't care about makes and models - save for where they're standing in the comfort and safety categories. For the most part if I don't see a recognizeable company logo and some chrome, 3-D lettering announcing it, I have little idea (at best) what each of the makes and I'm seeing around me on the road is. I have never gazed longingly at a car, imagining myself behind the wheel, turning the heads of jealous passersby. Consequently, when someone says "Ferrari" or "Mercedes" or whatever, seldom do I get a strong image in my mind. VWs stands out, of course, as do classic versions of Mustangs, so that even I know those on sight, but it's always been a very passive, disinterested affair for me.
The only times I feel any guilt about this is that it would seem to make me a lousy witness for an accident. I can generally describe what I saw in sufficient detail to pin it down - color, number of doors, general shape, obvious damage and, of course, if I happen to see the license number and/or the driver, so I'm hardly losing any sleep over my culturale deficiency, nor do I have "learn to identify makes and models of cars" on some Gatsbyesque To Do list to completing my character.
Still, living as I am as a dweller in suburbia, I know what I've had to deal with before and what I'll inevitably (barring, as ever, the sweet, intervening release of an early death) deal with again: Having to buy another car.
This has always been a task I've undertaken with little preparation, coming about generally when circumstance pressed the issue. To be fair,the last time we went shopping we had the sense to do it weeks ahead of when we needed to, having become aware that a replacement vehicle would be needed. This helped a little, and the lack of pressure helped us make a better deal than we had the previous time... but we still ended up signing ourselves into a deal for entirely too much money. The next time around we need to be much better prepared and much less the easy marks we have been.
Not setting out on this path specifically, while I was waiting for something to cool down this morning I idly followed a few links to and from some watered-down newspaper articles on the details of car sales. This eventually brought me to an interesting piece on Edmunds.com concerning a writer who went undercover to become a car salesman for a few months so as to see the situation from the other side. His primary goal was to glean information for the benefit of consumers, but a general broadening of perspective also played a part. He wrote a series of columns which, I was surprised to see, are all available here. (My expectation was to find a teaser piece, followed by a link to buying a book.) If you're simply interested in general strategies for making the best deal, skip to part 9. A more step-by-step guide, depending upon what type of vehicle one's interested in, can be found by browsing, once more, around Edmunds' site. Good and useful material, all, however meager my desire to put any of it into practice anytime soon may be.
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