Stephanie and I were worried about facing the winter with the current cars that we had, so we started looking for a new car. Stephanie's Nissan Altima doesn't do very well in bad weather, and my Chevy Lumina had had some issues with the tires ever since we got it towed, and the towing company messed it up.
In shopping for a new car we wanted a SUV. We wanted something that would prepare us for having children. In looking at different options we came down to two choices, a Honda Pilot year 2003 for $13,500 or a Lexus RX300 year 2000 for 13,000. They both had about the same mileage (88,000) and we test drove both and weighed the pros and cons of each. We ended up deciding to purchase the Lexus.
One of our concerns in purchasing the Lexus was the stigma that would go with purchasing such a car. We are not the kind of people who try to flaunt what we have, but decided we can’t change the way people think.
We made our way up to Access Auto in Salt Lake City to make the purchase. We got before the finance guy and started going over the numbers. There was over $2000 in costs besides the base price of the car. This made us hesitate about the purchase. We left the dealership and called our auto insurance company (American Family Insurance, which we recommend), and asked them about some of the costs of purchasing the car. They told us they could get the insurance for cheaper. We would save about $300 if we went through them. We went back to purchase the car and were told by the finance guy that he would give it to us for $199. He came down $300 in the blink of an eye. In the end we were at the table reading the documents and noticed that the insurance that he told us was required was optional. We caught him in and outright lie!!! he agreed to remove it completely, but refused to remove another optional insurance. He actually got upset and walk out of the room. The salesman convinced him to remove it and complete the sale. We ended up saving $620 of things that they told us we had to have, but ended up being optional. We still ended up paying the $300 dealers fee, but all in all we felt like we got a pretty good deal.
Here are some pictures of our new car.
