Kaz

The Search for a Used Car

Moments later I was feverishly searching for a used car to replace my Buick and get me by for a while. The prospect of getting a more reliable car is intoxicating. More specifically getting to choose the car rather than have it handed down to you (previous cars: 1988 Dodge Caravan, 1989 Chevy Celebrity, 1995 Buick Century) was the most interesting. I get to choose the car I ride in, it can say anything I want about me. A used BMW 3-Series projects a very different image than recent year model Ford ZX3 or VW Rabbit (Golf).

Initially the options were overwhelming. But I had a way to pare down the options.

I wanted a stick-shift car.

And I want to like it.

With ridiculous preconceptions of what I wanted in tow, I started out on my journey to find a car just right for me. This sojourn has brought me to many dealerships and to many a car. All of which have been disappointing. I originally intended on getting an older car, one with plenty of miles on it, one that I wouldn’t care about. Such a car would only need to last a year, at which point I could easily dump it off and purchase a brand new car.

After seeing a couple cars in the $2000 dollar range I became disillusioned about my stratagem. Any car that cheap would be no good much faster than a year. So it became apparent I needed to increase my price range and look for a car that suited my needs better. I could spend a little more money, have a car that would last me the year, and then be my winter ride when I got the car I wanted.

I had been planning for the better part of the last two years on getting a small two door sports car. Nothing too fancy, just something to be fun—potentially get me around a track on the weekends—but still be a competent road car. I had no intentions of seriously racing or tuning, I merely wanted a car that was fast enough that I could have fun with it. My short list of contenders had been permanently ingrained in my mind: Honda Civic Si, Volkswagen GTI, Mazda MazdaSpeed3 and the Chevy Cobalt SS/SC. All of which are stick shift cars (which is why I wanted a beater with a manual transmission, it’s been 3 years since I learned stick), all of which are fast and all of which are cheap.

Whatever beater I got would be taking the Cleveland-winter hits for my precious new car. In Cleveland the roads are paved with salt in the winter and no car stands a chance.

In my search I found one car that seemed to fit all of my requirements, except one. It was too costly.

My Fight With Ganley

Ganley sucks, to begin with.

They are swindlers, thieves of the highest order; charlatans who make you think they are helping you. But they are not helping you. Nor are they helping anyone but themselves. I would never choose to deal with them, were they not in possession of the perfect car for my needs.

A 2002 Dodge Stratus R/T, manual, higher miles, definitely not brand new, some power to it, but nothing I wouldn’t mind sacrificing to the winter. Unfortunately, the price Ganley Dodge wanted to charge was astronomical for the car. Kelley Blue Book has the car at $8400, Edmunds at $7300. What did Ganley want to charge?

$10,000

Well, not much ground for me to start on. I knew I had to bargain the price down, which is completely within the realm of sanity (at least I felt that it was). The first time I came to the dealership I brought my father along, my proxy test driver who would verify the car felt good and would simultaneously keep me from growing emotionally attached to the car, preventing a sort of fiscal nightmare I couldn’t even imagine. The salesman I was dealing with found this irritating, Chuck, we’ll call him, was very insistent that I drive the car. But I knew better.

Out of hand I low balled him, offering $7500, to which he immediately responded he could not do, but he would “consider” $8500. I claimed I didn’t know anything about the car and I needed to research the car to see if we could find a middle ground. I left promptly.

I returned the following day with my girlfriend in tow to throw down what I thought was a generous offer of $7800. Chuck left me sitting at his table, in the hovel he called “his office”. I hate this tactic, I despise it. Does he really think I believe he has to ask his manager how much he can sell the car at? Shouldn’t he have looked up this number after the first time I spoke to him about the car? Apparently he thinks I’m that dumb, so I wait. He returns with a smirk, and claims that he can go no lower than $9000.

Apparently, he’s that dumb.

I left the table in a huff, hoping to be followed, but my offer must have been too low for that. Instead I sat and stewed all week, frustrated in getting jerked around. It wasn’t until Saturday that I called Chuck back up and tried to make a cash offer for the car; saying that I would bring the money if I had his word on a price: $8000 all cash, out the door. And then he ruined the deal.

He once again “talked to his manager” and came back with the following resolution: “My manager says bring in the cash and we’ll see if we can deal.” I asked for a  confirmation, after all I’m not going any higher than $8000 and I don’t want to pull out all that cash only to be asked for more. Unmoved by my plea to not be irritated any more Chuck boldly began to spew out phrases that made no sense to me. All I know is it all ended in: “I can’t make a deal over the phone, bring in the cash and remember: I’m giving you the best deal. No choppy-choppy”

There’s only one response to that.

“Fuck you”

I didn’t get the car.

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Where to Start

About 6 months ago my current car began a slow downward spiral of quality. I never loved this car particularly much, but nonetheless it had served me well for nearly an entire year. My car had braved the frozen tundra of Cleveland’s winter and survived. Not even two foot tall snow drifts could slow down this absolute beast of a car.

My 1995 Buick Century Special Sedan; you put the special in “Special Sedan”. With your mighty four cylinder roaring, you seethe with several horsepower. You barrel down the street with no regard for human life, with your turn signal silently blinking, no need to make a noise to the driver telling him that the turn signal is on. You know he’s going to turn right, eventually. You stalwartly defend yourself from passengers, no need to let them in until the driver is safely in the car.

So what has crippled this mighty automobile, this Thor’s chariot?

It doesn’t have a brain.

Yes, some idiotic GM engineer in 1995 decided it was a good idea to cram as many electronic components into this econo-car as was technically possible at the time. Probably so they could all fail at the same time and leave the car a witless dullard. Thank you, GM Engineer. Bravo.

When I even think of touching my brake pedal the car gets really flustered, like a patient with a lobotomy gone wrong the car has no clue what it wants to do. According the scan done at the auto shop my Buick thinks it’s going zero miles an hour and is decelerating at a value approaching negative infinity miles per hour, simultaneously…at all times. My poor flustered car reacts to this information by fully activating my anti-lock braking system at all times.

If you are unfamiliar with what this is like imagine that stepping on your brakes on the highway at 70 miles an hour makes it feel like you are careening through a split log and caltrops factory at roughly the same speed. At lower speeds the effect is much more subdued; more akin to you and your passengers being really into the music on the radio, uncontrollably bobbing along to the beat.

To Fix or Not to Fix

For those who aren’t in the know about cars: this is extremely dangerous. Any time your brakes are doing something other than fully being applied you are going to take longer to stop. This isn’t a problem in the winter when you already stop early because of inclimate weather, but in the summer when everyone else is stamping on their brakes and actually stopping it is only a matter of time until I’m threatening my continued existence.

Remember how I said a shop scanned the computer on the car. Well, they also gave me an estimate for my car: don’t fix it. To replace the burned out ABS sensors alone (which were all they could do) would be three times the net worth of the automobile. Total repairs, much of which would need to be done at a dealership, would total in excess of $4,000.

…

So what car do I get to replace this piece of shit?

 

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