New Car!

Here's my new toy:

It's a 2012 Chevy Cruze Eco. A hybrid!!! Yay doing something positive for the environment! (Slightly.) This little car is fun to drive, gets up to speed quickly, and has a funky quirk where you can switch to "manual" and then press the stickshift forward and backward in drive to change gears (from M2-M6). It's supposed to be for towing and mountain-climbing purposes, but if you accidentally engage it (like I did on my solo test drive) the car forbids you from going over 30 mph without shifting.

I'm sure you can imagine how my test drive went last week. I did accidentally engage the "manual" mode when I put it in drive and, since I was by myself, had to figure out on a feeder road why I couldn't go over 30. Maybe it was better that I was spared the embarrassment of having a passenger (or worse, a dealer) in the car with me on that adventure.

My folks came up to help me purchase - I was all excited because the dealership guarantees to beat any new chevy price in Texas. And what did I have? An advertisement from a dealership near Dallas for the car, but at $2500 less than what Austin was offering! Oh man, was I set. I checked the Austin website and saw that there were only four automatic hybrids left on the lot - this one (my ideal), a baby blue one, a black one, and a red one. There aren't a whole lot of Ecos in the area, much less ones that come in color.

So my dad and I drove up, papers in hand, and walked around the new car area with a salesman looking for this elusive blue number. (Someone else had been driving it, perhaps test-driving, and it was parked in a side space away from the rest of the Cruze models.) I breathed a little easier when the dealer got the blue car's key in hand and I started giving my information, and then I produced the paperwork from the Dallas dealer. Oh, how smug I felt. I was going to get a deal.

But then I found out that all the Austin models have a "performance package" included that has automatic start, chrome wheels, and other doodads that I could care less about. (A $700 charge) So they weren't going to be able to beat the deal, but they might at least come within $700 of the list price for the other one, right? The dealer went off to pull the VIN number of the competitor's vehicle from the Chevy database.

Surprise! Turns out the people up in Dallas were liars and all of their Eco models were manual transmission. (Automatic =$995 extra). I couldn't believe such blatant misrepresentation occurred, but I called their dealership to confirm exactly what was going on. I was dumbfounded and duped and felt like an idiot for having referenced this comparison car that wasn't even close to anything offered at this dealership that I wanted. The guy did knock down the price by about $1000, but I still felt ridiculous and kind of betrayed.

Things went smoothly after that. I ended up borrowing $4000 from my folks to pay the difference (after factoring in Christmas monies and my brother's purchasing my old car) - I am hoping to recoup the majority of that balance from my taxes this year. Apparently the tax rebates are gone for hybrid cars that don't plug in (bah) but I can still deduct the sales tax from the purchase, at least.

So what to name it? Time will tell. So long as Rohan doesn't christen it, I think we'll be just fine.