Car Shopping

Yesterday afternoon, I meet my sister's family at the King's Auto Mall which is a street in Mason where there is a dealership for every car manufacturer. We were going to start at the Toyota dealership so we meet there. Ryan, my brother-in-law, came with me to shop and Nikki and the kids went back home to wait for us. We decided to bypass the Toyota's since I knew what I needed to know about the way the Camry handled and all of that. We started driving down the road and pulled into the Mazda dealership.

When we got out of the car, a salesman approached us and we asked what was comparable to a Camry and that would be the Mazda 6. He directed us to the row of the 08's and we started talking about the cars. Ac couple of my biggest must have's with a car right now - things that I am missing in the rental from what I had in the Camry - are a sun roof and a tape deck so that I can play my iPod while driving. The Mazda 6 didn't have anyway to play an iPod without adding a $200+ piece of equipment to the stereo system. We did take an 08 4 cylinder for a test drive. It was nice and there was plenty of room between the steering wheel and my body and I felt safe about that. What I didn't like was that it was pretty noticeable when the engine shifted into a higher gear and we were testing an automatic. We got all of the information from the car and I made my notes about what it had standard and the engine specs and what not. We also looked at the specs for an 07 V6 that was all decked out in the upgrades area.

After Mazda, we went to the Pontiac dealership. The guy who approached us was very nice and him and Ryan seemed to hit it off as far as finding things to talk about - the football games and trucks. Ryan introduced himself with his whole name and then gave Mike my first name. Mike made assumptions obviously. A little later, Ryan commented about the car that his wife drives and Mike kinda looked at me and said, 'isn't that you wife?' and Ryan and I both laughed and he said that I was his SIL. Mike said that he was afraid Ryan would say I was his girlfriend. We all got a kick out of that. Anway, I have been driving an 08 G6 since the wreck and I didn't like it at first, but now it has grown on me. We looked at the specs on the 07 G6's and Mike said that they are wanting to sell the 07's before the 08's, but that we could look at the 08's. The upgrade packages didn't change the prices too much on the 07's so we went and looked at the 08's to see what the prices were there. I picked out a 2008 G6 sedan with a couple of upgrade packages and we took it for a spin. It was very nice! Ryan enjoyed the heated seats, I liked the smooth ride and that the wheel and pedals both moved forward so that I could have a comfortable and safe ride. We also got some numbers and rebate information for both of the models that we looked at.

Once we left Pontiac, we stopped at Ford. It was our last stop since we were running out of time before we had to get back to my sister's house. Ryan got a couple of phone calls when we got out of the car, so I had to handle the salesman on my own. We looked at the Ford Fusion and decided to test drive an 07 4 cylinder. We all got in the car and I started it up. It was a very loud car. I actually made a comment about it about halfway through the test drive. So when we got back to the dealership, the salesman got keys for a 6 cylinder and we went out again. This one sounded just a bit louder than my Camry which was a 4 cylinder. Very odd. We got the information on the rebates just for an idea of the price and packages, but it was just for show. The Fusion seems like a slight upgrade from the Corolla to the Camry as far as the Toyotas go. Definitely not worth the money! And that was my opinion - but Ryan agreed.

All in all, I think my choice is the 2008 Pontiac G6. The salesman at the dealership made sense when he said to go with the 08 instead of the 07 because the 07 has already lost more value since 07 is almost over. If the same thing happened 4 more years down the road, I would get more out of an 08 than an 07.

Once we got back to their house and had dinner and Nikki left for work, we sat down at the laptop and did a little more research comparing cars and looking up the value of the G6's that are out now. Everything looks good on it. I have my color picked out and the packages that I want on it. All I need now is for the insurance companies to start working with me on a settlement for the Camry. I wonder if that will happen tomorrow....