Buying Vehicles via Internet

I’ve bought two cars via the Internet now.  The first was a used car and the second was a new vehicle.

I found my 2006 Mazda MX-5 on Autotrader.com.  It was 9 months old at the time.  A guy about my age had it, but was marrying a younger woman with two kids.  He needed a family car, and was sadly selling his sports car.  She must have been quite a woman.  I checked the Carfax report and that came back clean.  The car was actually in Albuquerque and I was in St. Louis.  However, I have a cousin in Albuquerque who is a car guy and into sports cars.  He went by and took a look at the Mazda and drove it, and reassured me that it was in good condition.  I made a very good deal with the gentleman because as “they” say he was a very motivated seller.  That motivation and the fact that he had been having a hard time finding a buyer worked in my favor.  I hopped on a plane, completed the deal and drove the car back.  I have been quite happy with “Lil Blue”.   Just as an aside the gal I was dating at the time tagged it as my Viagra car, mainly because it was little and blue…I hope.

I’ve bought several new cars in my life, but on the whole I prefer to find a late model vehicle.  That way someone else takes the hit on the depreciation.  My Mazda listed for $26,000+.  I gave the guy $19,500 for it after he had it for only 9 months.  He kept talking about the $7,000 hickey he was taking.  Another reason I do not buy more new cars is that I absolutely abhor dealing with car salesman.  New car salesmen are a little better than used car salesmen, but it is the difference between poison ivy and poison oak.  Both are going to make you cry and itch.  Plus new cars have just plain gotten expensive.

I killed my 1997 F150 a while back when I made a left turn in front of a car I did not see.  They hit me so hard that it rolled my pickup.  That is a fun ride everyone should have.  I came out the experience physically okay, just some minor cuts and bruises, but minus one cherished pickup.  It was funny as my toolbox flipped off the back of my pickup into the street.  I had a box full of golf balls in the access portion of the cab along with a bowling ball in a box.  The bowling ball and about 50 golf balls were rolling down Riverside Drive in Memphis, by gawd, Tennessee.

After researching vehicles I decided what I needed was a Toyota Tacoma.  I started looking around for a used one equipped like I wanted.  First thing I discovered was that finding one a couple or three years old was not easy.  Second thing was that folks still wanted quite a bit of money for them.  At that point I started considering new.   It was a very similar situation to when I bought my F150.  At that time the price between new and late model was not that big a gap.

I found several new vehicles like I wanted including one in St. Louis and one in Columbia.  Being bi…city, St. Louis and Memphis, they were fairly close.  I stopped by and looked at the one in St. Louis, after hours.  Next I popped the $14 to get a pricing report from Consumer Reports.  This was something I had not done before, but with the Internet it is easy, and within in minutes I had what Consumer Reports thought was the bottom price for this vehicle.  I don’t know the car industry, but I am more than a little sure that there is more profit built into the price than the difference between what the supposed bottom line is and what the customer pays.

I started negotiating with the two dealerships via email.   I was quite content to not have to deal face to face or over the phone with a car salesman.  Both dealerships shot me a price.  I shot a price back at both of them based on the Consumer Reports pricing report.  I ended up making a deal in Columbia just a $200 over what the pricing report stated.  It was a better equipped vehicle at a lower price than the one in Herculaneum (St. Louis suburb).

At this point I was stuck with talking to the Sales Manager and salesman.  I completed the deal, made a deposit, and they passed me on to the Finance guy to arrange financing.  I thought about selling some stock to pay for the truck but decided against that…for the time being.  At 1.9% interest that is close to free money.   My insurance agent was disappointed as I usually finance through State Farm, but they are offering 3.49% right now.  That is a very good rate, but not 1.9%.  I made arrangements to complete the deal on a Saturday morning in Columbia, MO.

Robin and I arose early and drove to the Joe Machens in Columbia.  First pleasant experience was meeting Nat Ferguson.  He was not at all what I expected. He is a very pleasant young man who I would not have picked out as a car salesman in a hundred attempts.  He knew his stuff, had all the “ducks” lined up so I could get in and out of there as quickly as possible.  He did keep “selling” on the truck the whole time I was there.  I found that a little odd as I had already bought the truck, but perhaps that is part of their philosophy to keep Internet buyers happy.   He had made sure the truck was prepped and ready.  He went over all the controls with me so I would not be fumbling with a new vehicle as I was driving home.  I really cannot say enough nice things about this young men.  If all car salesmen were like him I might came a little for often than once a decade.  Come to think of it, I could time buying a new vehicle with my colonoscopic examinations that they tell me I need every 10 years.   Both  are a pain in the butt, so why not.

The one thing I wish I had not done is buy the extended warranty form the Business Manager.  My granddaddy told me a long time ago to never take another man’s bet.  Buying an extended warrant is essentially doing this.  I am sure that the auto company has a wonderful statistical database of the repair and maintenance performance of all their vehicles.  The extended warranties are engineered to make them money based on these statistics.  I have never bought one before on any product.

They started off offering me double the 3 years/36,000 miles warranty.  That would make it 6 years/75,000 miles for around $1,700.  I was not interested.  They came back and knocked $750 off that price. At that point for some reason it seemed a good deal.  The reason may have been partly because I became focused on the 6 years.  If I had been thinking a little more clearly I would have remembered that my driving habits put me at driving around 15,000 to 20,000 miles a year. I could expect to exceed the mileage in 4 to 4.5 years.  At that point it was really not a good deal for me.  Oh well.   They were not pushy about it, but I should have taken a deep breath and thought about what I was doing.

On the whole, I would rate my buying experience positive.   I would definitely deal with Nat Ferguson at Joe Machens Toyota in Columbia, MO again.  In fact, Robin walked out with a pamphlet on a Prius.   Nat never stops selling. Just skip the extended warranty.

I am thinking about getting some vanity plates for my vehicles.  For the Mazda it would be “Lil Blu” and for the new pickup “Big Blu”.  If Robin were to  buy the Prius and get it in blue she could tag it “Eco Blu”.   Yes I know silly, but it would be fun.