Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

Car Shopping: Part 2

May 14, 2007, 1:34 am

In this latest installment of my car shopping adventures, I will talk about all the fancy high-class places we visited. Cause yes, even expensive cars come in hatch.

Audi A3

My experience at the Audi dealership in Kitchener sucked. First of all, the place was tiny, and second, the salesrep acted like we were wasting their time. Basically they only managed to fit like three cars into their showroom, and so we had to look at the A3 outside. And then the guy just stood there inattentively, not even trying to tell us about the car features, and not hearing us when we ask questions. It’s like he’s there babysitting or something and we’re like punks playing around in a fancy car. Then at the end, he said they have an A4 inside that we can go sit in, and just walked away. It’s annoying how the next closest Audi dealerships are in Hamilton, or the one by Heartland, I wouldn’t mind test driving it.

With the A3, EVERYTHING is a package. There’s a cold weather package, a technology package, a sports package, a premium package.. After everything, it’s just bloody expensive. Though granted, most of the stuff in the packages are not that important.

Anyways, my experience at other dealerships was much much better than this place.

Volvo C30

I thought the design of this car was a pretty big departure from your typical Volvo because the back window looks so round and bubbly. I thought it looked a bit silly in pictures, but actually it’s pretty nice. The biggest disappointment though, is that even though the back window is so big, the actual space is quite small even with the seats folded down. The seats do fold down completely flat because the bottom part of the seat folds forward. Not as much as the fit of course, but it does wonders for the space. They also used a new fabric for their seats, an almost neoprene-like material. Much better than leather since it won’t heat up, but still looks really good.

The salesrep there was a nice guy though, and spent quite some time with us showing us stuff. I think maybe it’s because business is slow (ie, there was no other customer at the time), and not because he consider us potential customers though. Regardless, after the C30, he showed us the funky features of the S80 of his boss’s car. It had things like a heads-up display for collision warning, an adaptive cruise control system, a blind spot info system that will light up whenever someone’s in your blind spot. Ha, that car starts at $55k. Volvo also had an interesting bike rack system that’s like an arm that will lower your bike from the top of your car.

As for the C30, it’s not a consideration as the space is not very practical.

Mercedes-Benz B200

Aka, the B Class. This one of our favs. First of all, the saleslady at the Kitchener dealership was very nice and patient, and actually seemed to think of us as customers. After showing us around the car, she actually asked if we wanted to go on a test ride. I mean, the Audi people didn’t even give us the time of day, the Volvo guy was friendly, but didn’t ask if we wanted to take the C30 for a spin. And she let us go by ourselves. We must have been gone nearly half an hour, we took it from Victoria back up to Northfield.

So what we liked about it. First, it had a lot of space. The seats also fold down flat because you can lift the bottom like the Volvo. That gave about 5 feet of storage in the back. You could also lower the whole back cover over the spare tire about 8 inches for even higher clearance in the back. The seats were of course, very comfy, and you sit pretty high off the ground, so it almost felt like an SUV. The sound system was also very nice. Continuous transmission for a smooth ride, but also have those “play” manual modes. It was way too easy to go 120 on the high way though, as the typical “12 o’clock” position in the speed dial points to 120 instead of 100 like all the other cars we were used to.

One downside is that cruise control is not standard. WTF? A $30k car without cruise control?? It also, of course, eats premium gas. Also, the accessories are really expensive. The ipod integration kit was like $600 or something. You can buy like, 3 ipods at that price! I mean, does the kit come with an actual ipod? Which is the accessory then, the integration kit, or the ipod? They also had a $500 bike rack that allow you to mount your bike inside the car in the back. It’s probably cheaper to just buy a bike at your destination, though the concept is nice.

We looked at leasing options for this, which wasn’t too bad. For a 3 year term, it would be payments of ~$500 a month with a $6k deposit, so about $24k at the end. To put that in perspective, if I did the same type of payments for the Fit, I would have owned it by the end of the three years, instead of having to give the car back.

Conclusions

There really is a difference in visiting your typical dealership compared to luxury brands. Rudeness aside, the sales tactic and attitude is very different. The Volvo and Mercedes guys were very relaxed, friendly, no pressure. The Nissan and Toyota guys were very earnest and almost desperate. The Nissan guys are still calling us with offers. They even sent us a thank you card!

Though for cars in this price range, leasing is the better option for us. We get to try a nice car for a few years while it is still under full warranty, to buy time until a more ideal permanent car surfaces. It’s just hard to justify paying that much and then not even actually getting to OWN it at the end (Though we can always buy out the lease at the end and then sell it). And for practical reasons, it also don’t make sense. It would be awesome to use on road trips, but can you imagine going car camping in a Benz? Just parking it at some wilderness lot while you hike the interior? Where will you find 91+ octane gas? Or how about taking it to Home Depot or Ikea to carry large, often dirty, items. It’s just wrong. And even if you can fit your bikes in the back, would you want to put your dirty bikes into your pretty car and risk scratching up everything?

Argh, I think we’ve concluded that we need to have a permanent, do anyting car first, before we can indulge in a nicer car as a second car. So maybe in a few more years.

I was leaning towards the Versa over the Fit after test driving it, but now Mike is nay-saying it because it ranked first in the toxic new car smell list. IE, it will burn off toxins in hot weather such as chlorine, bromine, arsenic, mercury, etc. Urgh, so it’s considered one of the safest small car in collisions, but you could die from just sitting inside doing nothing. Great!

So it seems we are back to the Fit. The sports package makes it prettier. But Mike is also saying the Sports version is less fuel efficient so he recommends the LX model. Secretly, I think he just doesn’t want to be seen in an orange car. Sigh.