Another Car Purchase Horror Story: The Last Laugh

Thirteen years ago, I was in the market for a dependable, used car to replace the one my parents had let me use during college. Its head gasket had gone out, so while it could make short trips between my apartment and college, my daily driver was of little use in driving the 60 miles back and forth to visit friends and see my folks on the weekends. I, a fairly naïve - early 20ish guy, who could barely even change his car's oil on his own, decided to go car shopping. Little did I know, but I was about to have material for a contribution to the Internet's collection of car purchase horror stories. In mine, however, it wasn't all due to the salesman, and the buyer has the last laugh.

Easy Pickings

My mother drove me to an auto dealer that she had had a good car buying experience with in the past. She, old enough to be my grandmother, and I, a wet behind the ears college boy, must have looked like easy pickings. Somewhere inside the dealership office, a loudspeaker must have sounded: Grandma's buying her grandson a car! We had no more than stepped out of her car when they descended on us.

No Preparation

We didn't follow any of the car buying preparation rules. We didn't know what kind of car we were interested in, other than something relatively new, still under warranty, and something with four doors, as my wife was pregnant with our first child. We hadn't done any research, and didn't know what my credit looked like, other than that I had credit cards with small balances and had not missed any payments. We basically came to the dealership with an idea of how much I could afford in payments (not much), and a desire for something of quality.

Buick Anyone?

The salesman who helped us was friendly enough. My father, before he passed away, was a "Buy American" type of guy. He didn't put a lot of faith into foreign cars and, for right or wrong, had drilled into us that foreign cars were expensive to repair. Toyota and Honda were out. The salesman pointed us to a large stock of Buicks, and we gravitated towards his abundant supply of 4-door Buick Skylarks.

You Can Pick Any Color - As Long as it's Silver or Green

I didn't want red, as I bought into the "red cars get more tickets" line. I was told that I didn't want black or white, either, as they were too difficult to keep clean. That pretty much left silver or green. The silver car looked better overall. It was clean, had about 8,000 miles left on its factory warranty, and seemed to be well taken care of. The price was reasonable. Most importantly, for a young guy just out of high school, the stereo sounded awesome!

The Pitch

"You can't go wrong with this car" went the sales guy in his well rehearsed, albeit very stereotypical sales pitch. He continued saying, you'll have this car for years, with its dependable Buick quality. It only had 28,000 miles on it, so what he was saying was likely true. I took it on a test drive, and oddly, it pulled to the right somewhat. The salesman said, oh that's okay, someone must have hit a curb. We can take it in to the maintenance department and have it aligned and the tires balanced for you, free of charge.

I Smarten Up

I agreed, but sensing something wasn't right, I asked him if we could have someone else take a look at it first. It should have been a clue that the salesman was reluctant to let us take it anywhere for a couple of hours. He stated proudly that every car gets a thorough inspection before being placed on the sales lot, and that it still has miles left on its factory warranty. After a bit of back and forth, he relented and let us take it to one of my father's friends who was a mechanic.

An Inconvenient Truth

"This car's been tore up underneath" said my father's friend. Even worse, it must have recently happened, because there's grass and mud all up under the hood and the scrapes all over the bottom of the car are still shiny. He figured that someone must have taken it out for a joy ride, and probably did so from the sales lot itself. There was no telling what they had done to the car without a considerable amount of inspection. So, we brought it back to the dealer, told him what they had found, and thanked him for his time. He was obviously irritated at the loss of time, and said he'd get to the bottom of what happened, and was understanding as we said we were going to keep looking, thus prolonging this car buying horror story.

Growing Weary - I Settle

After stopping at another three dealerships, I finally settled on a green Skylark. It had the features I wanted, was at a cost I could afford, still had 7,000 miles of its factory warranty remaining, and the stereo was acceptable. An inspection of this car didn't turn up anything unusual for a car of its age. So, I bought it. I got talked into the extended warranty for another $1500, which upped the monthly price a bit.

Last Laugh

12 years, and a direct lightning strike to the car later, I still have my Skylark. The odometer currently reads 302,038, which means I've put 273,00 miles on it. One car, a Kia Spectra, that was meant to replace the Skylark when it hit 150,000 miles, has since worn out, and I now have a new car. Sorry Dad, the new one is a Nissan. While the Skylark was under extended warranty, it had a PCV valve go out, a coolant leak, and the transmission disintegrated. Either the previous owner drove this car hard, or the factory workers were having a crappy day. Anyway, these problems were each fixed under the extended warranty, more than covering its value. I have since put maybe $700 worth of repairs into the Buick Skylark over another 10 years. The original engine with all 300k miles and "new" transmission with 250k miles are still running fine. I joke that the lightning strike must have Frankenstein'd my Skylark and now it won't die.

So take heart car buyers, not all car buying horror stories end in carnage.

Sources:

A Quick Start Car Buying Guide. (2011). CarClicks.