DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

(This is the second of a 3-part series on buying a new car. Read Part I.)

But now the waiting began. Buying a car is like going to the emergency room: it’s a four-hour process, no matter how desperate you are. Survival is a matter of bleeding slowly.

We chatted with our junior salesman for 15 minutes, him with his chin on the negotiating table. We never did hear back from the pricing guy on the podium who wanted to flay me with the paper cuts of a million overpriced estimates. Instead, we were joined by a sales manager, a 20-year veteran — salt-and-pepper hair, big watch, and a matter-of-fact if not gruff attitude. He noticed that I was sitting in the power seat, and tried to regain the upper hand. He nonchalantly spun one of the empty upholstered seats and sat on the arm, thereby staying at my height, but the chair tipped over and sent him stumbling.

I expected actual bargaining at this point, but the manager was also playing the game — he couldn’t sell me the car, but he could make an offer on my behalf to a second dealer that had the model I wanted. This is the traditional runaround, passing authority to a 3rd party.

We went back and forth for a while. The manager kept repeating the invoice price, which I knew to be irrelevant. The sticker price on the window is of course a work of fiction, not that that prevents salesmen from referring to it like “see what a good deal I’m giving you?” The invoice price, which used to mean the true cost of the car, is irrelevant too, for dealers make most of their money on kickbacks and bonuses from the manufacturer. I knew these “incentive” figures, from Edmunds.com. I knew there was $1000 in “dealer cash” in this sale — that, essentially, the dealer’s true cost was $1000 below invoice.

The manager disappeared for a long while, purportedly to pitch our offer to the second dealer. When he returned, he presented a carefully constructed page of numbers describing various payment schemes. In essence, he hoped to bypass the negotiation over the car’s price, by focusing on the payments instead. He led us through his schemes in order, from a $660/month payment (36 months) to $500 (48 months) to $400 (60 months), as if by magic he was saving us hundreds of dollars with each new offer, even though he’d begun with a purchase price we’d already rejected.

I took the sheet and appeared to considered it. I borrowed the manager’s pen, pointed at his downpayment figure and said, “We’re not making a down payment.” I drew a big jagged X through the number. It was rude, but we’d already discussed terms with the junior salesman: $0 down, 60-month 0% APR loan from VW. The manager was either not aware of this, or attempting to manipulate us, and I hadn’t the patience for either miscommunications or games.

I pointed at his 36-month financing figure with the pen. “We’re not interested in this.” Another X. I pointed at the 48-month figure. “And we’re not interested in this either.” Another X. Then I handed him back his sheet and pen, feeling satisfied that I’d decimated his stupid pitch but also nervous that he might jab that pen through my eye.

We didn’t make much progress after that. Finally I revealed that I had a quote from a competing dealership. The sales manager doubted that the quote was real (“Did he give you the VIN? Without a VIN, the car is only hypothetical!”) but ultimately encouraged me to pursue it. “It’s a great deal,” he said.

I’d had two goals for the dealer visit. One was to test-drive the vehicle, which we’d done. The other was to determine whether the price quote I’d secured through CarsDirect was as good a deal as it seemed. The sales manager had just admitted that it was; therefore we’d met both goals. We should have left immediately.

Instead I asked the sales manager to give me his best quote, in case the other deal fell through. He left us waiting for another 15 minutes, a revenge break, then returned to claim that the car we wanted didn’t actually exist in California. Was this an attempt to cast doubt that our Internet bid was real? Or was he simply bitter that I’d refused to play the role of the docile, undereducated customer? We ended up leaving the dealership without a quote, suspicious that the Internet guy was also playing games.

(Read part III)