A new car?

Warren had a light bulb moment last week and started off by saying "Er, don't know what you think of this but I have been thinking!" Uh ho, that doesn't sound good. He went on to say that he thought we should trade our car for something that would be suitable for everyday use as well as pulling the caravan. We had discussed before about buying a cheaper work horse vehicle just for towing, as we both are happy with our car and want to keep it. I said "Funny you should say that as I had been thinking that we would be costing ourselves an extra thousand dollars a year just to have a second vehicle without even running it."

Later on that afternoon, I checked on the internet to see what vehicles were around and what prices. We want a diesel auto with a bigger motor for towing. Yes, there were quite a few so no problems there. Warren also looked later that night and sees one and of course we go into negotiation. he went and looked at it on Thursday (he wanted to wait for me but I told him to look himself) he seemed happy with the way that it looked and felt, he test drove it but did say that it was heavier than ours. They agreed to hold it for us til today.

We drove down and I could see bubbles on the back window, we were told that the tint had to come off to pass registration. There was a paint chip on the bonnet, a broken catch on the glove box, no mats. It felt smaller than ours when I sat in it. I declined a test drive, I figured if Warren had done that, that was good enough for me, besides I did not want to take a different vehicle out on a main road in weekend traffic.

Into the office we go and we invited to sit and coffee was supplied, then there was the handing over of the keys of our car. Sales woman came back and started writing figures down, first was the Jeep at $16,888, then she wrote Tucson (our car) after that was $6000 so the changeover price would be $10,888. Warren said, "No" he beat me to saying No! She went on to say that the Tucson were hard to move and if it was a 4wd, then they could have offered more yayaya! but with the coolant leak and the timing belt needing to be changed that was their offer. I pointed out to her that the internet price had been $15888 and she said that as they had to fix the paint work that was where the extra thousand came in. I said again about the listed price so she changed the figures which brought it down to change over price of a $9,888. Where upon we said thanks but no thanks, we would not be buying the Jeep.

We have seen our model car advertised up to $14,000 (with more mileage on the clock) and while we didn't expect to get that, we did expect quite a bit lower change over price. I would have liked $4000 but would have gone to $6k possibly even $6.5K but not 10k, we felt insulted on behalf of our car!