I Just Want to Buy A Car

I have been in two serious accidents in the last three years. Neither of them were my fault. My chiropractor has suggested that I buy a larger, heavier car that will be safer than my little Kia Optima LX. I am sad to do it as I love my little Kia but I know I need to take care of my safety. I am a safe driver but I can’t rely on others to be safe around me.

I spent the weekend getting my car all clean and ready to trade in. I vacuumed, spot cleaned the carpets, cleaned the vinyl, gave it an armour-all treatment, washed the windows, and cleared everything out of the trunk. It was hard to do as it kept raining so I had to start and stop both days. I went to several car washes to have the outside done but they were all closed due to the rain. We’re not allowed to wash our own cars because we’re in the middle of a drought. I finally got the inside done and just decided to forget about the outside. I took a bath, got copies of all my service receipts and all my research materials and went to Hyundai to look at a basic Santa Fe.

The Santa Fe got top marks for safety from the government crash tests and the insurance industry. I got an insurance quote and it would actually go down if I bought this car, which is really a small SUV. I read the editor and consumer reviews, determined the safest color (silver) and was all set to buy. Everything hinged on the test drive and the price.

So I get to Hyundai and test drive it and it is fine. It’s a nice car and I liked it. It doesn't have the same pickup as my Kia but I could get used to it. There was no price on any of the new cars so that made me nervous. While we are talking and I am giving him info on my car to get a trade-in quote he tells me that the Santa Fe is $24,000. I tell him that I can't afford that and that the Hyundai website says it is $21,695. He doesn't believe me so I give him a printout showing it and he takes it to some guy in the corner.

Then he comes back and gets more info from me and sees that I am only paying $202 a month for my Kia. He wants to know how I managed to get my payments so low, did I have a big down payment? I say no, I have good credit and I got a good interest rate. He wants to know what interest rate I will be paying on the new car. I don't know. Then he goes off to the guy in the corner and comes back and asks me what payment I want to make. I tell him I already have financing so he doesn't need to worry about that. He tells me he needs to know in order to figure out where they can be on pricing. I want to say that the price of the car should be the price of the car and not dependent on what I can pay. What I say is that my payment is going to be in the neighborhood of $250 a month. He goes back to the guy in the corner.

Then he comes back and tells me he has good news and gives me a big smile. This is the first smile he's given me since I arrived. He hands me a piece of paper that says the price of the car is $26,695 ($2,695 more than he told me a few minutes prior and $5,000 more than the Hyundai website). He says he'll give me $6,695 for my car and if I also put down $8,000 then my monthly payments will be around $270 a month. I told him I don't have $8,000 to put down. He tells me he'll go back to the guy in the corner to see if he missed anything. I tell him never mind. I get my keys and go.

I thought these car dealers need to sell cars? I thought they need to dump their SUV's that no one wants. This car was supposed to be $21,695. Hyundai has a $2,000 rebate on the Santa Fe through the end of the month. They also are advertising an additional $1,000 over trade-in value. If my car was valued at $6,695 then they should have given me $9,695 in trade-in and rebates off the $21,695 price, leaving me $12,000 to finance. This would have been perfect. My payments would have been $250 a month. Instead they wanted to try to squeeze as much as they could out of me. They have 17 Santa Fes on their lot, three times as many as all of their other cars, which leads me to believe they are overstocked. They could have sold one of those to me today.

Now I have to go back to the drawing board and either pick another car or find another Hyundai dealer that doesn't work like this one. I am not happy. This is about the 5th car dealer I’ve been to in the last two months as I work through the various models I have chosen. It has not been a good experience. If I can get a sales person to talk to me, they try to show me what they want to show me and they tell me I can’t afford the cars I am interested in. I think they are just trying to push their agenda on me. I do not want to settle, especially since I don’t really want to sell my little Kia but I need to for safety’s sake. I have money to spend and a car to trade-in. Why is it so hard?