The New Car is Here! The New Car is Here!

Woohoo!

After a mere six months, my Prius finally arrived. It was a bit anticlimactic really - the dealer called, said "it's here." I said "sure, right, I've heard that before." He said "no, really, it is, come down and get it." So I did - a few hours later - I figured I waited six months for them to get the car, they can wait a few hours for me as well (though secretly, I'm sure I was thinking "shit, if I don't get there soon, they'll give my car to someone else").

But I don't want to talk about the car itself (which is very cool) - I'm not like that. I want to bitch about the whole car buying experience, because that's just the way I am (more on the car another time).

The salesmen were really cool (there were two - the one who listened to me complain about their "system" every two weeks for six months, and the one who happened to not be on vacation the day the car actually arrived). Always trying to be nice, understanding, etc. But in my limited experience, those are the only nice people at the dealership.

I traded in my old car ("old" is relative - it was a 1998 BMW 3 Series convertible). It was in pretty good condition, but has 90K miles. The trade in value estimator took a look at the car, and then took a look at what kbb.com said the car was worth, and then decided I should get the lower of the three amounts listed (for cars in "poor," "good" and "excellent" condition) - his rationale was straightforward - the car had high miles. Not that my car was in poor condition, but it had high miles. Ok, listen you dumb shit.. It might have high miles, but the kbb.com prices are based on the mileage - remember when it said "how many miles?" and you typed in 90,000? Doesn't that mean they're taking mileage into account when they suggest the car's value? Yeah, I thought so..

And then there was the finance guy.. Or, rather the purported finance guy. He would make Ron Popeil proud. He might have had a financial background, but really he was more of an "and if you order now we'll throw in a set of six steak knives" person. He must have gone on and on for at least an hour about how owning a car is expensive and it's best to get the paint sealed (they use water-based paints now, rain is bad for them), and how a single repair will cost $2500. I want to say it was entertaining, but it wasn't.

It bugged the shit out of me. Not that he was trying to sell me these things, but his style - scribbling little graphs on a piece of paper, talking about the number of cars stolen every day (tip: the salesman spent quite a bit of time telling me how secure the "Smart Key" is, you and he should sync up before you tell me how often Prii are stolen, ok?)

And, of course, with anything car-related comes a chat with the insurance agent. I was pretty excited when I called - I'm getting a new, responsible car, so I was expecting my rates to go down a bit - and I've got Lojack, even better, right? Nope, not with my insurance company. It costs $80 more a year to insure a brand new Prius than it did to insure a seven year old BMW worth $10K. That just makes no sense, as I tried to explain to the agent.

Here's how I see it - all things being equal (clean driving record, comparable coverage, etc), the money I pay to the insurance company is somehow supposed to be loosely correlated to the value of the car I'm insuring (i.e. expensive car, higher payments, cheaper car, lower payments). So if the rate for my new car only goes up $80, that means one of two things - either I'm not paying enough for the new car's policy, or I was paying way too much for my old policy. It's left as an exercise to the reader to decide which is the more likely scenario..