James Burleigh
Well-known member
I bought Fang a car yesterday--a 2006 Kia Optima with 34K miles. Now, for me car shopping is a hugely complex, frustrating, and painful activity that gets my blood pressure up: tons of Internet research trying to figure what car to get, followed by endless driving around, and finally negotiating with someone whom in the end you always feel got the better of you and in any event dumped their lemon on you.
So it was a blessing to have my brother-in-law, Kevin, come along. Because for him car shopping is a very simple exercise: decide what you want ("You want a Kia or a Hyundai, JB, nothing else!", go find it on a dealer's lot ("Only work with dealers, JB, because they're in the new car business and want to move their used cars off the lot!") , and pay what they're asking less a couple hundred bucks. So I was happy to let him lead me by the hand through the process.
Kevin and I would go to a dealer's lot and walk the used-car portion, with Kevin striding around looking for the Hyundai's and Kia's, and me continually peeling off to look at the specs on the convertible Mustangs. Kevin would glance over his shoulder at me and say, “No no, JB. It’s Hyundai’s and Kia’s that you want!” and keep striding. And I would frown and sheepishly rejoin him.
At one point I test drove a small, four-cylinder Kia Spectra that Kevin thought fit the bill. I shoe-horned myself into the driver’s seat and proceeded to haul the meek salesman off the lot and onto the freeway on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Flooring that little four-banger with the two of us unconsciously leaning forward to get every ounce out of it, we merged into the fast-moving freeway traffic.
Fifteen minutes later we returned to the lot and to Kevin, who stood anxiously awaiting my assessment because I had expressed to him a concern about the small four-cylinder engine and whether it had enough power. So when I stepped out of the car his first question was whether I thought the car had adequate acceleration. I thought for a moment, then screwed up my face in a look that Kevin must have interpreted as “That’s a stupid question to ask me.” Finally I explained, “The vehicle I ride every day will go from 0 to 100 miles an hour in 6 seconds. And you want to know if I think that car has adequate acceleration? The answer is no!” And then I added hopefully, “Maybe we should look at the Mustangs…,” to which Kevin responded “I don’t think so, Jimmy-B!” and strode on down the lot.
All in all, and largely thanks to Kevin’s rational, calm approach, the experience was fairly painless, including in the pocketbook. And now Fang has a nice car (it’s really cherry—looks brand new, with side-impact air bags front and back and a great sound system!). And BTW, we did all the appropriate Consumer Reports and Edmunds quality and price research, and of course nowadays dealers give you free CarFax reports.
I will say that one area Kevin and I digressed on method was in the offer price. He thinks the dealer asking prices are fair and so pretty much pays the asking price, which is a very simple approach to be sure. But having written my MBA thesis on value-pricing, I never presume the asking price from a dealer has anything to do with the value of the vehicle or what I should pay. So when it came time to make the offer, sitting across the desk from the salesman, I explained that I wanted to pay what the car was worth based on its market value, and then--based on some cool economic theories I came across during my thesis research--explained how I determined the market value using Kellys, and how I can only presume the car is average quality and not top quality as their price suggests, etc. He went away with my number, then came back with a number very close, and we had a deal. Kevin would have paid a lot more.
Below is a picture of the blue Kia Spectra I test drove. That’s the hapless salesman who went along for the ride. And note the cherry yellow Mustang on the right, and the red one in back.
Fang's new car:
So it was a blessing to have my brother-in-law, Kevin, come along. Because for him car shopping is a very simple exercise: decide what you want ("You want a Kia or a Hyundai, JB, nothing else!", go find it on a dealer's lot ("Only work with dealers, JB, because they're in the new car business and want to move their used cars off the lot!") , and pay what they're asking less a couple hundred bucks. So I was happy to let him lead me by the hand through the process.
Kevin and I would go to a dealer's lot and walk the used-car portion, with Kevin striding around looking for the Hyundai's and Kia's, and me continually peeling off to look at the specs on the convertible Mustangs. Kevin would glance over his shoulder at me and say, “No no, JB. It’s Hyundai’s and Kia’s that you want!” and keep striding. And I would frown and sheepishly rejoin him.
At one point I test drove a small, four-cylinder Kia Spectra that Kevin thought fit the bill. I shoe-horned myself into the driver’s seat and proceeded to haul the meek salesman off the lot and onto the freeway on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Flooring that little four-banger with the two of us unconsciously leaning forward to get every ounce out of it, we merged into the fast-moving freeway traffic.
Fifteen minutes later we returned to the lot and to Kevin, who stood anxiously awaiting my assessment because I had expressed to him a concern about the small four-cylinder engine and whether it had enough power. So when I stepped out of the car his first question was whether I thought the car had adequate acceleration. I thought for a moment, then screwed up my face in a look that Kevin must have interpreted as “That’s a stupid question to ask me.” Finally I explained, “The vehicle I ride every day will go from 0 to 100 miles an hour in 6 seconds. And you want to know if I think that car has adequate acceleration? The answer is no!” And then I added hopefully, “Maybe we should look at the Mustangs…,” to which Kevin responded “I don’t think so, Jimmy-B!” and strode on down the lot.
All in all, and largely thanks to Kevin’s rational, calm approach, the experience was fairly painless, including in the pocketbook. And now Fang has a nice car (it’s really cherry—looks brand new, with side-impact air bags front and back and a great sound system!). And BTW, we did all the appropriate Consumer Reports and Edmunds quality and price research, and of course nowadays dealers give you free CarFax reports.
I will say that one area Kevin and I digressed on method was in the offer price. He thinks the dealer asking prices are fair and so pretty much pays the asking price, which is a very simple approach to be sure. But having written my MBA thesis on value-pricing, I never presume the asking price from a dealer has anything to do with the value of the vehicle or what I should pay. So when it came time to make the offer, sitting across the desk from the salesman, I explained that I wanted to pay what the car was worth based on its market value, and then--based on some cool economic theories I came across during my thesis research--explained how I determined the market value using Kellys, and how I can only presume the car is average quality and not top quality as their price suggests, etc. He went away with my number, then came back with a number very close, and we had a deal. Kevin would have paid a lot more.
Below is a picture of the blue Kia Spectra I test drove. That’s the hapless salesman who went along for the ride. And note the cherry yellow Mustang on the right, and the red one in back.
Fang's new car:
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