We Have Car

Well, it took almost six hours and two dealerships, but we got a car.

We left at about 9:15 a.m. and made it to the first dealership. We opted to talk to their leasing people first and the salesperson (Amanda) kept bouncing around the topic of the price of the car but never came right out and said, “This is what it’ll be.” After 90 minutes of delay Denis finally got really rude and put his foot down. It helped that we had a baby and a toddler with us, adding to the urgency about getting it done.

As we were heading to the parking lot the manager came out and said, “We’ll give you $3000 for your truck,” but by then Denis had had enough.

So we headed to the used car place down the block. Upon walking in I said, “Look, don’t waste our time like the last place did or we’re walking. We have a truck worth $3000, I’m willing to put down an additional $1500 and I want a payment around $150. What does that get me? No pussyfooting around.”

Rodney sat us down and went to “check with his manager”. While sitting there I said to Denis, “As long as they don’t try to sell me on a Hyundai we’ll be fine.” Rodney comes back a few minutes later and drives me over to another section on the lot. A section surrounded by Hyundais.

“Here’s the Hyundai Elantra – I can definitely put you in one of these today with the payment near to what you are looking for.”

“Nope,” I said resolutely. “No Hyundais. I hate Hyundais.”

He asked me why and I told him about my 1994 Elantra that was a piece of garbage. “But they are second only to the Lexus in customer satisfaction,” Rodney said. “The 2005 Hyundai Elantra is nothing like the 1994 Elantra.”

“Nope,” I said resolutely. “No Hyundais. I hate Hyundais.”

He had me drive it back to the dealership entrance and sat us down with his manager, who proceeded to tell me why the Hyundais were better now. I balked for a while and then finally gave in when they said they could get us a payment of $170 per month.

Denis cleared out the truck of all my junk while I waited for the finance guy to become available. That’s one part I won’t complain about. Once we got into the financing area we were done in 20 minutes. Just in time too because both of our kids were ornery and overdue for naps (they fell asleep on the short drive home).

Once we got home, we installed CootieGirl’s car seat (love that LATCH system) and CootieBoy’s is in there but not quite installed yet. I now only have a cassette player instead of my CD player – I’ll have to save up and get a new CD player in there at Christmastime.

So I have a silver 2005 Hyundai Elantra. You won’t hear me act excited about it, because the jury is still out on it. I just don’t trust ’em and it will have to behave REALLY well in order for me to eventually say, “That Elantra is a great little car.”