Thursday, August 09, 2007

Crazy Car Buying

Here is how crazy car buying can get.

I have put down a $500 deposit on a 2006 325xi BMW that my dealer bought at an auction because it was an AWD manual. I have not seen the car, I have not driven the car, and I am probably not going to buy the car, and in an email the dealer mistakenly told me it was going to cost $437,800! (I told him that was getting out of my price range, he said it was a typo).

Long story short they did buy it at a BMW dealer auction thinking it had everything I wanted, but my deposit is refundable. It just gave me "frst right of refusal" so I can drive it and then tell them if I want it. It's kind of a flier, but I figured it's a safe bet, and they won't rip me off of $500 to lose the sale of a new car. I guess they think this car will move fast.

In other news, the ONLY 335xi manual in town has been sold! At least I got to drive the manual twice beforehand, however I was planning on driving it a few more times :)

The other really weird part about test driving cars is that sometimes I'll ask to drive a specific car and they say, "Oh yeah, we have one, we just sold it but you can drive it today." So a couple of times I have driven cars that other people have bought but haven't picked up yet, and let's just say people are not gentle when they test drive a car! This happened at multiple dealers and I would be a little pissed if I bought an expensive car and people were out joy-riding in it!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tom, I bet you can negotiate the extended warranty and the car for sub $300K. Good luck.

What color is it?

Mike

Tom said...

Mike - this used one if black with tan leather, not bad but probably not my first choice.

Anonymous said...

That's such a chic a question! "what color is it".
:p

Unknown said...

That reminds me of Ferris Bueller when the valet parking guys were all over the city riding Kameron's dad's expensive car, hilars!