New Car Shopping
Jenn and I went out car shopping tonight. What a headache. We pretty much had our minds made up about what we wanted before we arrived. We wanted a 2003 Pontiac Vibe in Neptune Blue with Slate interior, sunroof, power package, air bags.... pretty much everything except the 17" wheels and the fancy radio. We went in a couple of months ago to Ed Martin to look, and they said it wouldn't be any problem to get what we wanted. They said that with our GMS discount, GM Card discount, $2000 factory rebate, and trade in of Jenn's Sunfire, we could probably get it for under $10K. We were thrillled with this news, but we weren't ready to buy yet. We wanted to save up enough so that we could just pay the whole thing off. So now we are at the point where we can do that.
We took our test drive, and our previous concerns about the instrument panel were relieved. It was very easy to read. The trunk is big enough (one of Jenn's MAJOR concerns). So we get back to the dealership... uh oh. There's a problem. I guess GM is no longer making the 2003 model. So they may not have exactly what we are looking for. That's fine we think, surely something close is near by. WRONG! We absolutely did not want a white car, and that is the only one within 300 miles that has most of the options we wanted. So we said, ok, show us everything that's a Vibe GT and is blue. There are only two within 100 miles, and neither had a sun roof. Oh, and by the way, we're only going to offer you half of what we offered before for your trade in!!!!! Needless to say, we were a little upset. We can get exactly what we want if we order a 2004 model, but we won't get the $2000 factory rebate if we do. So now it looks like we can't get what we want without spending less than $14,000! $14K is still a really low price to pay for a new car that is fully loaded and exactly what we want, but our hopes were set so high after our first meeting with the dealer. Now we feel like we're taking it from behind. We know we want to get a GM car, because we want to be able to use all of the credit we have saved on our GM Card and also use the GMS discount. That is knocking down the price of the car by almost $5K from the MSRP. If we can talk the dealer up to around $4500 for our trade in (which is Kelly Blue Book value), that means we will be paying $13,000 for the 2004 model new. It would be very hard to beat that price on a similar non-GM vehicle. The dealer is supposed to call me back in a couple of days after running a more involved search. I'll see what he has to say after that before we make a decision. Unfortunately, we only have until August to use both the GMS and the GM Card together. After that, you have to choose one or the other.