Buying a car, act one

Tamara and I went over to Sunridge Mazda today to get her a test drive in a Mazda6. Unfortunately, they don't have any of the ones we want on the lot, so she had to drive a touring edition sedan, with all it's luxury appointments. We aren't impressed with the power seat. Manually sliding it back and forth is much faster, and we have to slide it around a lot, due to our height difference. This was Tamara's first test drive (I have been doing all the ones up to now), but we are seriously considering the 6 so she finally drove it.

It turns out that I suck at navigating. Mazda has a test drive route picked out, which we decided to follow even though the sales guy wasn't with us. I was doing well at first, but then I kept missing turns and making her turn around, which pissed her off. A lot. Ultimately, she more or less liked the car, or at least can live with it. She liked that the front passenger seat slides very far forward, so it is possible to get one of the giant three-in-one baby seats in the back. We were a bit concerned about that.

We even did a bit of talk on price with the sales guy, but I couldn't get him to budge very much. It was an interesting experience in a way, dealing with a professional negotiator. He spoke quickly and lumped things together, and it was tough to get him to separate things out. Shell games. I think he answered some of my questions with fibs, so it might be possible to get him to move some more. Unfortunate they don't have the car we want on the lot, so it is harder to get a deal. Maybe we'll have to wait for the 07's. But then we definitely won't get a deal.

Tamara says she likes the part of car buying with the test drives and talking about cars, but the negotiating a price part sucks. I'm inclined to agree.