New Car

We headed down to Capitol Toyota yesterday to test drive a new Prius.  Just test drive, mind you.  We had to get to the grocery store to pick up a few things for today’s Winter Solstice gathering.  We snagged a salesman and walked around the lot looking at what they had on hand.  Surprisingly, they had a blue Prius loaded with the options we wanted with the exception of an XM receiver.

 We both drove the car and liked it a lot.  There’s a few things to get used to - stepping on the brake before putting it in gear, the console gear shift, the power button, and so on – but you pick that up pretty quickly.  On the plus side, it is really roomy, even in the back seat.  It has the nav system, bluetooth, CD changer, and a backup camera.  Basically it has all of the toys. 

After the drive we walked in to the sales office.  I had previously been contacted by a fleet manager from another dealership through the Costco auto purchase program so I figured I knew what the price should be – roughly 2000 below sticker.  And that included the XM install.

The salesman agreed to the price I had been quoted, and during our talks I stressed that the deal included the XM installation.  Everything was shaping up fine.  Then we got to the finance office, and as we were going over the final (really long) document, Janet asked where it said that XM was included.  It wasn’t.  I was willing to let it go because by this time we had been there for over 2 hours and we still hadn’t bought the food for the Winter Solstice gathering.  Janet wasn’t so willing.  Both she and a friend had purchased vehicles from Capitol Toyota in the past and the same thing happened – the verbal deal hadn’t been transferred to the documentation and the salesman was trying to deny that it was actually a part of it.

We let them stew for a bit and they finally caved in.  They didn’t want to lose the sale over a couple of hundred bucks and I drove out of the lot in our new car.  The XM should be installed by the end of the week, and since I don’t have to work this week I’ll be able to go over the manual and figure out how to set up all the options.

The overriding reason for getting the new car should be seen fairly quickly.  I figure I was using at least 3 gallons of gas per day commuting in the Pathfinder.  The Prius should bring that down to less than one gallon per day.  In addition the Prius uses 87 octaine instead of the 91 recommended for the Pathfinder, saving me even more money.  The downside is that now I have a car payment again but the fuel savings make that less painful.