Tales from GNIKville

My Car Purchase Story

Short version: The Internet is your friend, Costco is your ally, and promise yourself that you won't buy the car the same day you do a test drive.

Now on to the details of how I purchased a new 2007 Nissan Quest S.

First, why a minivan? Well with two kids the trusty 2001 Subaru Outback was starting to buckle under the load after 130K miles. On the financial side, between the alternator dying in the middle of Connecticut, a $2K head-gasket repair and an upcoming need to replace the catalytic converter it sure wasn't feeling like we weren't making car payments every month. On top of that the rear seat was just big enough to accommodate the two child car seats and left no room for a fifth passenger, let alone a friend for the kids.

This didn't leave many options. SUV's were out of the question. Really not much more practical than the Subaru wagon, more money, more gas and not very convenient for loading small kids into car seats and such.

The only real choice was a minivan. I have a number of friends that have already taken the plunge and joined the Minivan Club so the stigma wasn't really an issue but it did affect our purchasing decision.

The first step in buying a car is picking the one to buy. I'd originally hoped that the Subaru Tribecca would be a salvation but after giving it a test drive my impression was that it was going to be a lot of money to be very cramped (8 cu ft cargo with all seats up).

Ok a minivan, but which one? We had the big players (Honda Odyssey, Toyota Sienna), the domestics (Dodge Grand Caravan, Chrysler Town & Country) and the niche players (Nissan Quest, Kia Sedona). We settled on three choices to focus on:

Nissan Quest. Frankly it was the exterior styling. And they have nice commercials. Sad, but true.
Honda Odyssey. If everyone else is driving one, maybe there's a reason?
Chrysler Pacifica. A last gasp attempt at not buying a minivan.

So with that list in hand I called some local dealers to make appointments to test drive each on the last Saturday of the month. Last Saturday? Yes, all things being equal the Internet-wisdom seems to suggest buying in the last week of the month is your best chance at getting a deal. This end of month happened to also be end of quarter which made it even better.

The key to the test-drive day is to promise yourself that you will not buy a car that day. No matter what the sales guy (or gal) says, stick to your plan. You have 3 potential choices, you're going to test drive each and then go home and think/talk/sleep on it. Be firm and don't be afraid to get up and walk out.

The first appointment was with Honda. But due to some dumb planning on my part we ended up at the wrong Honda dealer and didn't realize it until we'd unpacked the kids and entered the dealership. Talk about plans being the first casualties of war! We were already starting off on the wrong foot. So no appointment in hand we were shown to the "up" sales-woman who took our name and brief info and asked what we were looking for. She proceeded to say "sure I'll go get one" and 20 minutes later came back with the next higher trim than we'd requested which just happened to come with leather seats and the nicer engine. But she said "oh, it's the same other than the leather. hop in!". We dutifully drove it (just walking out is much harder than I implied earlier, but we should have) and it was very nice. Everything seemed where you would want it and felt good. Back inside the dealership we regained our game face and politely told her that we had another appointment. If I hadn't asked for her card I probably wouldn't have gotten it. The car was nice, but the sales technique was lacking.

After a trip to Dunkin Donuts to kill time and compare thoughts on the Honda, we drove over to the (correct) Nissan dealer to try out the Quest. The salesman I'd gotten on the phone to set up the appointment was Joe the Internet Sales Manager (or one of the two or so). He was much more the expected car salesman (not in a bad way) and had the model we'd asked for ready to go. The Quest felt just like the Odyssey and from the test drive I really couldn't feel the difference. There were interior differences. The Honda has more seat configurations for example, but the Nissan felt just as put together. Just different.

Next up was Chrysler. Going from the imports to a domestic really is night and day. Or entering another country. Everything works almost the same way but feels different. The sales guy we had an appointment with was young and nice but was so busy he practically just threw the keys at us and let us drive it ourselves. The Pacifica is fun to drive. It's got a 4-liter V6 with the triptronic type auto/manual shifting thing. Let's just say I gave it a good try-out. As expected the quarters were as cramped as in the Tribecca but probably wouldn't have been the end of the world. This was the only dealer that was interested in looking at my trade-in before sitting down to talk purchase numbers and the estimate was unsurprisingly bad. $3K when Kelly Blue Book suggested $4.7K for fair condition.

With the drives over it was time to get rid of two options. First to go was the Pacifica. Not practical enough and let's just say that by not matching the manufacturers warranties of the imports (3/36 vs 5/60 drive-train) it's just hard to take them seriously.

That left the hard choice. Go with the car everyone else is driving (and once you start looking you see Odysseys everywhere!) or the "cool" one. Well damnit if we're going to buy a minivan at least we'll have the cool one.

So it was the Nissan Quest. Now the nervousness sets in: how am I going to negotiate a deal and not get raked over the coals? This is where the Internets come in very handy. Truthfully I'd done a fair amount of research before the test drives but that doesn't really matter here. What does matter is that you read these before buying your next car:

The Motley Fool's buying a car series.
Edmunds.com's confessions of a car salesman
Hacking the Car-Buying Process a Car

The first two are pretty old but the concepts are all still useful today with some tweaking. The third is a contemporary experience that applies many of the same principles.

Through sitting up at night surfing the web I also ran into a what seems like an essential tool in buying a car. The Costco Auto Program. Costco negotiates deals with dealerships to provide fixed markup offers to Costco customers. In the case of the Nissan Quest that meant that I could walk into an authorized dealer and walk out at $100 over invoice. That's a pretty good deal in and of itself and if you aren't interested in the work or time involved to get a better deal you could just stop there and drive away knowing you didn't get completely ripped off. Just remember that this doesn't help you with the trade-in or financing or add-on offers (warranty, lowjack, life insurance, etc).

Unfortunately there was a gotcha in my case. The closest authorized Nissan dealers to me were about 100 miles away. There are at least 50 dealers closer than that (trust me, I know. more on that shortly). I clicked submit on the Costco form and asked to be contacted anyway. Worse come to worst I could drive out there to take the deal.

In the meantime I compiled a list of all the Nissan dealers within 100 miles. Luckily I'm a hacker at heart and a little python scripting later I had my list. I then went through and checked the inventory of each dealer to see who had what I wanted (trim, options and color). It wasn't fun but it was somewhat interesting to see how much inventory was in the Northeast US. About half of the dealerships had one or two of what I was looking for (S, with DVD, not red/blue/brown).

On Sunday I also took my Subaru to a random used car lot to get an offer from them to compare against the trade-in offers from dealers. This lead to the sketchy-but-fortunate series of events that make my car buying experience unique and probably unrepeatable. This particular used car lot sold mostly late model luxury cars and really the only reason I stopped was it was the first one that didn't look completely sketchy. The guys working there were all suspiciously young and hip looking but whatever. Neil took my information, checked out the car and another guy even drove it around the block. Eventually he came back and explained how he could get the same thing but ready to sell from wholesale and that all he'd be willing to offer me was $3-3.5K. On the way out he offhandedly asked what new car I was looking for, because "he knew guys" and might be able to broker a deal. I told him what I was looking for and what my dream out-the-door price I was looking to pay was. Figured I'd never hear from him again.

Now it was Monday morning. I had my list of dealerships and was planning on walking down the list soliciting bids from the Sales or Internet Manager at each and attempt to get a bidding war going. But before I could start I received a call from one of the Costco approved dealerships who told me about the $100 over invoice deal and said he'd get back to me if he could find a model that fit my request (he never did but that was fine).

I took this information and called Joe at Nissan and said that I'd like to get at least the same deal from him as I'd of course like to do business locally. Joe said he was sure they could work it out and would call me back.

Still I was planning on calling at least a couple of other dealerships to see what the water felt like and maybe get a better deal. But before that could happen I got a call from used-car Neil. He said he had a guy that would give me the price I'd asked (essentially $2K below invoice). I reminded him, as I had already explained the day before, that if his guy was at the same Nissan dealership I'd test drove at we may have a problem. Neil said not to worry and I agreed to go over with him later in the afternoon.

At the dealership he seemed to know a number of the guys on the floor fairly well and we managed not to run into my guy. Eventually "Smitty" was located after making the introduction, Neil left to sell more used cars.

First thing I told Smitty was that I'd been in just two days earlier and test drove with another sales guy. Smitty was not happy at this point as Neil, of course, never relayed this information. I was promptly ushered over to Joe because even among car salesman they don't steal from each other. (at least after the customer has been logged in the system taking a test drive)

I was somewhat nervous starting the negotiation at this point but got it out there that the reason I'd come in to see Smitty was that I'd been lead to believe that I had a deal at $26K out-the-door. This was on a MSRP of $28,870 and invoice $26,462. The price I was asking without the tax, title and registration was approximately $24,000. I never would have had the guts to come straight in and ask this.

Joe was somewhat skeptical but said he'd see what he could do and went off. I suspect at this point that there was a three way conversation with the Sales Manager, Joe and Smitty. Ten minutes later Joe and the Sales Manager returned to discuss. It was made clear that they would accept the offer but were very interested in getting their hands on my trade-in. I explained that I didn't have it with me but gave the Sales Manager a description of it and that I was looking to get $4500. He came back with an offer of $4K and I shook their hands and took my deal.

The way I see it, the $2K below invoice made my trade-in worth $6K with a deal at invoice. $6K was about what I was expecting to get via private sale anyway and saved me the hassle of floating the cash, listing the sale and finding a buyer.

The Finance and Insurance guy was easy to deal with and I managed to say no to everything except for the extended warranty. I'd priced these out at Warranty Direct and the dealer's offer was only slightly more expensive but covered more stuff for longer. I consider this insurance in case the Quest quality isn't quite up to snuff. It's also transferable if I want to sell later.

I'd also gotten pre-approval for a 5.90% loan from Bridgewater Credit Union but the 5.99% from the dealer was good enough that I just let them have it.

Four hours after entering the dealer on Monday I drove home in my new Nissan Quest reasonably confident that I wasn't taken to the cleaners. (although I'm always suspicious that if they're agreeing to do the deal I must be loosing somehow)
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