Lubricate Your Financial Arse

One thing from which it is impossible to escape at this time of year is the blizzard of car sales commercials on TV. Everyone is having a year-end event involving red tags, sign and drive, or "our lowest prices of the year" and they want you to come in and take a test drive. There are national ads from the automotive OEMs themselves, urging you to consider the Toyotathon, or the Event Of A Lifetime from the many Chrysler brands. Then there are the cheesy local dealer spots, where some fat wanker in a dodgy suit attempts to persuade you that they, and only they, have the best deals on Fords, or Buicks, or whatever marque they're peddling.

Part of me is ready to go and buy a new car. As of 2008 I will have been driving my GMC truck for nine years, which will be 45% of my total driving lifetime. I never needed a full-size truck; it's a pain in the arse to park, is impractical for almost anything I actually need to do, and hardly conveys executive sophistication. On the other hand, it has 4WD and never gets stuck; I can pick up large crap any time I like, and it hasn't let me down. In fact, although it had a few warranty-covered teething problems it's needed nothing for the last nine years except tires and a battery. It still has the original wiper blades!

I never intended to have a single vehicle for so long. The other 55% of my driving life was provided by a total of eight cars, ranging from a rusty orange Avenger to a dull Ford Taurus. There were various Vauxhall Cavaliers, a Ford Sierra Sapphire, Honda Accord and a BMW 318. In spite of this promiscuous early driving life I now find myself bogged down with this truck and have wasted my best years (in terms of the intersection of wealth and youth) driving something that doesn't so much convey "young, successful and fun" as "fucking old fart". The trouble is that it gets me from A to B and now costs hardly anything. Plus when I try and get up out of the low seat in a regular car I am reminded that soccer and weightlifting fuck up your knees like nothing else.

There are a couple of problems inherent in buying a new vehicle, though. Firstly there's choosing. While you're looking, the automotive world is a succession of possibilities, all with appealing features, but as soon as you buy you are committed to one choice and suddenly all the ones you didn't choose look better and better. Each year new, younger models come out and make your old one look increasingly dated. In this respect buying a car is like choosing a spouse - it would make more sense to rent different ones for each journey if it weren't so impractical (and fucking expensive).

But by far the biggest turn-off in buying a new car is actually buying a new car. Walk into any retail establishment and you are unlikely to view the person behind the counter as your enemy. The sale may be better next week, or they may not have exactly what you want, but there's not really any way for them to personally screw you. At Burger King the worst that's going to happen is that they'll forget to put your fries in the bag (I know someone could gob phlegm on your Whopper, but it doesn't happen often and you wouldn't notice anyway). But a car dealership is the one place that you absolutely know the whole purpose of the exercise is for them to attempt to fuck you as hard in the financial arse as they possibly can.

If you are not well-informed they will try and get you to pay list price, or give you some weak discount. They will undervalue your trade-in to make more money; they will attempt to charge you for useless undercoating and fabric guard, the sleaziest game in town; they will attempt to add on charges at the end of the deal that you never heard of before; they will hard-sell you to buy today and often lie through their teeth in order to get the deal done. Other than going to a Saturn dealer (where by avoiding the haggling you substitute the possibility of getting screwed for the certainty) the only way to deal with the process is lots of research, working the dealer's internet salespeople (to avoid the salespeople on the lot and streamline the process) and making sure you get competitive bids on everything. This means that the whole process is a pain in the arse, but one that is unfortunately necessary to avoid being fucked in the arse.

For anyone considering buying a new car I can heartily recommend going to Edmunds.com first, and, just for the fun of it, checking out the Confessions Of A Car Salesman. Or you could just get lubed up before you go in, to make the inevitable a bit less painful. Your choice...


Copyright © 2007 Edward Bison