A Tale of Two Car Buyers: Some Things Never Change!
Auto writers, journalists, commentators and pundits are often subjected to inquisitions from relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues outside the automotive world:
Questions include: What do you like best? What should I buy? What would you buy? Why that? How much should I pay? It’s not a clunker now what? Is it really safe? But it’s so ugly – looks like a bread box.”
And the “cash for clunkers” program, the economy and a shortage of ‘desirable’ cars have exacerbated the questions.
But what happens when it’s your wife who is thinking about buying a new car? Especially when she has always done shopping on her own, cut her deals, paid for it with her money, favors a specific brand, likes a specific style, thinks the entire process is a nasty game and the buyer never wins, most salespeople are either disinterested or too pushy, the entire process is fraught with a lack of full disclosure and it contributes to a daily “CBH” – car buying headache.
What if it’s the new wife of one of my oldest and best friends, who, aided by her new spouse with his own rather odd set of automotive buying considerations and values? Considerations that are far different than the new bride’s who buys only “cute little cars in pretty colors that make her smile.” But she also gets a CBH and CMS (car marketing stress) after walking out of every store. Her husband however goes ballistic at the process and demands to speak to the oldest salesman on the floor or walks out. Then calls me. You see the newlyweds live in Texas.
It’s a helluva conundrum and it’s been going on for a couple of weeks. Over the breakfast, lunch or dinner table with my wife and countless cell phone calls from my friend and/or his wife as they enter or leave a dealers showroom. Is two weeks the gestation period of new car buying? Must be.
My wife’s decision to consider a new car was prompted by the service manager of a dealership literally saying, “It’s time. Your car is on a life support and I can’t tell you how much long it’ll last.” Sad news after 150,000+ miles of faithful service, but it was the push to end procrastination she needed and ruefully decided to go car shopping.
Free Test Drive!
Contrast this to my friend who thought his wife’s six year old car, while small, cute and “does bring a smile to her face,” was too damn small for the crazed nuts driving those big trucks and SUVs on the nasty freeways of Houston. “It can’t be really safe,” was his comment. His wife, however, was not going car shopping. Her car was just fine, thank you and only had 40,000 miles. It took some convincing, but the newlyweds spent two weekends car shopping.
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