Finally pulled the trigger on buying a new car. I've been squirreling away money for the last 4 years at my job and finally, I think it's time to do something with it. I managed to talk the dealership down about $700. Not too bad considering their margins are super tight. Going to buy it outright, no financing nonsense or payments for me!
It's this guy.Buying a new car is generally a happy time for everyone, but for me it's especially happy. I've been driving a 20 year old car that's mean-looking (by design), ugly (not by design), loud (by design) and rattley (definitely not by design.) I bought it under delusions of being a street racer a long time ago, and I whooped its ass pretty hard for the 6 years I drove it, adding plenty of dents of my own. It was a total lemon when I bought it and I did it no favors either. I try to hide it, but I'm actually pretty vain and while I liked scaring people with my car (it looks like what racing cars tend to look like in games like Need For Speed after they've wrecked across the race track a couple times), I didn't feel very cool in it anymore and every time I take it out on the highway I'm worried what it might do at 80 to 85mph. The last trip my driver-side window popped out of the frame and was ratting against the car so hard I thought it was going to shatter in my face. The dealership gave me $250 for it, which was fine by me because it saved me the effort of a) selling it to some unlucky bastard of a private owner b) listing it on Craig's List or something or c) parting it out.
So buying this thing is a huge mental relief for me. I don't have to worry about my car
betraying failing me at the worst possible moment and it won't be an embarrassment to drive anymore. No more flat tires every 6 months due to bad alignment. No more feeling like I'm being blown around the interstate by the wind. And hopefully no more getting pulled over for one of many equipment violations on a yearly basis.
Seriously though, buying a new car at a dealership is a whole fucking ordeal. I was there for probably 5 hours, 1.5 of which was waiting for the fucking finance guy to hear "he's going to pay cash" and slam a bunch of forms through a printer. The haggling was kinda fun I'll admit but, I can understand why people find car buying intimidating. You have to walk in there ready to walk right the fuck back out to get what you want. Not that easy when you're sitting across from a guy who is a human being and his boss is walking around saying shit to other salesmen like "Need a sale out of you sometime this month!" No wonder younger generations just prefer to skip all the haggling and nonsense and just buy a car straight off a website.