Car Fun



It has been said that buying a new car is supposed to be fun. I have no idea who said that, of course, nor do I care. I just bought two of them.

I wonder - were they talking about the challenge of finding just the right vehicle with just the right options at just the right price? Is it the challenge of playing the game with the salescritter to squeeze the last dime out of him and then watch him run to the "sales manager" for one last offer?

Perhaps it's the thrill of driving that vehicle off the lot right after it has become officially yours and feeling the satisfaction of a job well done.

I have always assumed that the term 'new car' meant 'new to me' since I haven't been able to afford a really NEW car since I got married the first time many years ago. This isn't a complaint, mind you. I find the love and companionship of a woman much more satisfying than power windows and a remote trunk release. It's just that wives and children and family pets tend to eat up spare cash.

So is it logical to assume that if buying one car is fun, buying two cars will be twice the fun? I think not!

I knew my van was dying. They made it very clear to me the day I finally took it to the radiator shop to get that slow leak fixed. I dropped it off before work and I'd only been there about an hour when the phone rang. "This is the radiator shop," the female voice on the phone sang, like she was about to ask me for a hot night in her apartment. "I'm afraid the news isn't good. You have a blown head gasket."

"It purrs like I kitten," I protested. "How much will it cost me?"

"How long have you been loosing coolant?" she asked, sounding a bit concerned.

"Oh, I've been adding coolant for the past six months. How much will it cost me?"

"You must lead a charmed life," says her, "That van is going to leave you sit any time."

"It purrs like a kitten, how much will it cost me?"

"Did it ever overheat?" she asked me, like she knew my best friend had just died.

"It ran hot once or twice but it never overheated. How much will it cost me?" I was starting to feel guilty for asking.

"I have no idea how much it will cost." She was finally addressing the minor concern of where my next meal might come from. "We don't do head gaskets here, you need to call a major repair shop," she told me as though I really should know this simple fact of life. She was so helpful. She even gave me the name and phone number of a place that would tell me how much it would cost.

I called them with a bit of apprehension. I told them what the radiator shop had told me. "Oh yes, THAT problem. Very common with that engine," he said sympathetically.

"Yeah, I'd heard that," I said offhandedly, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about. "How much will it cost me?" I was going to get to the bottom of this money thing.

"Well, we have to take the thing apart and pull the head off and see if it can be machined. Then we can give you a pretty good estimate."

"And how much will this 'pull the head off before you can give me an estimate' thing cost me?" I had the feeling that every time I asked the question the price went up, but I was spared having to ask it again. I sensed that the voice on the other end was smiling as he gave me a number that was roughly equal to the retail value of the high mileage van that I had taken such good care of for so long.

"Well, I'll have to get back to you on this, I said, knowing that I was probably defeated.

I described the symptoms and the prognosis to my trusted mechanic. My trusted mechanic, Barry Beck, rides Harleys and works on them. He is also allowed to work on my wife's 1978 tangerine orange Mustang King Cobra. This means his word on such matters is the law. His word was "Unload that puppy before it leaves you sit." Yes, I know, that's eight words. Not welcome advice, but from him, the law.

I hoped that if I talked to another mechanic, I would hear some good news. Two mechanics later I knew it was not to be.

Being one that always looks on the bright side, I realized that I was in a good position. My van had high mileage and was about to die, but it purred like a kitten. I had time to have fun finding just the right vehicle with just the right options at just the right price. And with a bit of ride sharing and careful driving, I would even have a van as a trade-in.
The hunt began. Every day I would check the newspaper and every night, the wife and I would take her car and search the car dealers. I like looking around at night, especially after the dealerships close and the sales staff goes home! I can cover a lot of ground in a short time

I knew what I wanted. Minivans are the only way to go. They have plenty of room for the drum and most of the other stuff that we take to pow-wows. They handle nicely and will pull the camper without straining. They are, for the most part, the perfect vehicle for me.

I had no idea that there were so many dealers. I had no idea that there were so many mini-vans. I had no idea that they were so expensive! But I had time to have fun finding just the right vehicle with just the right options at just the right price.

I also had time to learn something. Car dealers speak another language. They do not seem to understand the concept of wanting - or needing - to limit the amount of money that one spends on their offerings. They also seem to confuse what you want the sticker price to be with what you might be willing to borrow after trade-in, down payment, tax, title, transfer, notary and documentation fees are paid.

Documentation fees? Is there anyone on this round world of ours that knows what they are? I have a theory about documentation fees, but I shall keep them to myself. I am a gentleman.

I have, by now, resigned myself to the fact that, unless I find a car dealer that is more concerned with my budget than than he is about his own, I will either have less vehicle than I planned or I will live on rice and potatoes for the next three years. I can live with this!

At the beginning of week number three of the great minivan hunt, the phone rang in the office. "Honey, my Jeep is making a funny noise." I can live with this.

Stress is something that I have always managed to control. Today, it isn't at the top of my list of successes, but I head home to take a listen.

I start the Jeep. I've heard the plaintive "funny noise" cry before. It usually turns out to be something well within my limited skills. I wasn't too sure about this one. At first I didn't hear it at all. Then I did, but hey, it was only when I accelerated hard. Other than that, it purred like a kitten. I can live with this.

The wife and the Jeep headed out for their evening appointment.

When they arrived home, I was told that the noise had gotten worse...much worse. I listened. It had.

I drove the Jeep up the road to the nearest service station. "Is that what I think it is?" I asked the mechanic that came out to see what was making all the noise.

He listened politely, as if he wasn't quite sure. "Yup." he said with that mixed tone of sympathy and dollars for his pocket. "Piston rod bearing."

I pondered what it was that I'd done to deserve this stroke of bad luck. The mechanic began to ponder what would be required to silence this terrible noise. Shutting off the ignition seemed to help. By the time he had concluded that there was no way to get to the source without removing the engine, I knew that the Jeep was history. There comes a point when fixing things just doesn't make good sense. This, sadly, was one of those times.

The mechanic understandingly, if not reluctantly, let me park the scrap metal in the back lot until I decided what I was going to do. Small consolation.

"We can deal with this." I told my wife, without much conviction. I couldn't very well tell her that we were about to become broke and eat rice and potatoes for the next three years...twice.

We didn't have time to have fun finding just the right vehicle with just the right options at just the right price. We needed to find two vehicles and we knew we'd get the best deal if we bought both of them from the same dealer at the same time. We would have to find one vehicle fast, why not double our fun!

One of our after hours raids had located a van in our price range so we decided this would be the first place to subject ourselves to the subtleties of whoever lurked within the office of the small dealer.

It was, by every tale, the textbook used car dealership. Looking at the sticker prices on this lot, one was forced to contemplate whether the new car dealers priced their used cars by the pound or this place was selling well polished wrecks. At this point, I supposed, it didn't matter. Here were vehicles that I might be able to afford by the pair.

There wasn't much choosing to be done. The minivan was all but a done deal. It had every option known to man, the price as right, and it ran. It also smelled like chemically produced cheap coconut. "Nauseating." I said to myself as I wondered how this dealership could make any profit considering his overhead in fake smells and ArmorAll.

Great stuff, that ArmorAll! It can make anything look good. Did you ever test drive a car that had ArmorAll on the steering wheel? I'd compare it, rather favorably, to hanging on to a greased eel. This one happened to be greased with artificial coconut oil. It stunk!

No noises, shakes, rattles, or misses, and just under a hundred thousand miles. The van was as good as ours. We were halfway there.

The station wagon was old but didn't have a lot of mileage on it. Too little mileage, in fact. At this age, that odometer could have made a couple trips around. I made a mental note to ask the dealer, knowing that he would certainly tell me if he had rolled back the odometer.

I drove the station wagon, a ten year old stretched bubble of a thing. Other than a dozen cigarette burns on the seats, it appeared to be well taken care of. It could have been driven by a little old lady that only drove it to church and smoked a lot.

This was a car I could live with. It was ten years old but had less than half the mileage of the van. And it was loaded with options...window cranks, steering wheel, headlights... I could live with this.

We sat across the desk from the dealer. Now I know what all those people that I had arrested felt like all those many years ago when I was a cop. This guy held our very futures in the tip of his pencil. The numbers that came out of that pencil would determine if I would be able to get to work. If they were good numbers, my wife would be able to continue with her growing young business. If those numbers were just right, the phrase "Would you like fries with that?" would not become a routine mating call in my vocabulary.

Pulling it all together turned out to be fairly painless affair ... if you like root canals and vasectomies without anesthetics. In our little night time expeditions we had determined that minivans and jeeps really hold their value. Except, of course, when you are trading them in. At that point in their life cycle their value is as solid as warm yogurt. And the jeep sounded like a garbage compacting truck early on a Saturday morning, so that cut it's value a little. A "little" being like calling a Tsunami "rough water."

Sight unseen he made us an offer on the jeep. We'd been honest and told him exactly what the mechanic had said. And he made us another offer on the van, which, yes I admit it, I told him had no problems. It's not my fault he never popped the hood or took it for a drive. And he gave us what he said was "the best he could do" on the two we were going to take.

I'd already talked to the credit union so I knew that any financing we were going to get would be on the '90 minivan. They simply don't lend money on anything older. And we knew exactly how much they would give us...80% of book value. We added up our cash, the offers on the two trades and came up with a number somewhat short of being able to afford both cars. "No way," I told the evilly grinning face on the other side of the desk. "I just can't do it."

"What will it take to put you behind the wheel?" Who hasn't heard THAT line from a used car dealer? "Well. it's pretty simple," I told him. "We can only borrow 80% of the book value on the van and here is our little cash cache. Put that with the trade-in and give us the titles to those cars. THAT will put us behind the wheel" What a hard nosed bargainer I am!

"We can live with this," replied the dealer. Dealers always talk like they have a mouse in their pocket. He started punching more numbers into his calculator and his pencil became a blur as he worked to put us behind the wheels of our dream cars.

When the eraser dust settled, our new friend had an idea. "Look," says he. "This van has a book value of more than what we are asking. Here's what we do." That mouse was talking again. "We raise the sticker price to more than book value. Then we write in more down payment than you are giving us, deduct that from the price of the station wagon, add the deducted tax from both of them, credit you with the trade-in values, subtract the doc fees, multiply by the number of moons in the solar system of Venus, and divide by the number of seasons. See, it all works out the same and you'll be able to drive them home."

"OK" I said. What a hard nosed bargainer I am!

I saw my wife shifting from one cheek to the other and putting the checkbook back in her purse. This wasn't working for her at all! She was getting agitated. I was just confused. I get that way.

"Put all that in writing and lemme look at it," I said with a certain air of arrogance. "Maybe we can do business." What a hard nosed bargainer I am!

His fingers started again, this time on the keyboard. "I just wrote this program myself," announced the dealer. I'd found common ground at last!

"With a database?" I asked, feeling more comfortable already.

"Yep. Used FileMaker Pro on a Mac and converted it to the PC for the dealership."

I was no longer just another buyer. I had something I could talk to him about and sound like I knew what I was talking about. "I'm the network manager at the college," I told him and suggested that I had worked with FileMaker Pro. I really had. I hoped this might make me sound like I knew about making good deals on cars. Why did I think that?

The printer hammered out the two separate deals and he handed them to me with a flourish. I took his calculator with all the confidence of a hooker in a prayer meeting and went to work. The way he explained it, he had raised the price of the minivan so that I could afford it. I looked at all the numbers and it looked like that was exactly what he'd done. Made perfect sense.

I worked it out twice, different ways, and it worked. The amount of money to change hands didn't get different ... which vehicle it was for had.

We agreed verbally, put a hundred bucks on each vehicle and went home.

I took all the papers and a calculator and tried it all again, slowly and carefully. It worked.

Two days and a lot of vehicle sharing later, we were back at the dealership with checks in hand. The papers were signed, the tags were swapped and the deal was done. At last look, the jeep was still parked in the back lot of the service station where it died.

Five days later, both vehicles are still running. Our luck has changed.

Now, if we can just learn to like these vehicles!