So, WE ended up getting a new car for his birthday / Father’s Day since my car ‘Got Low’ and I decided to drive his little Civic to and from work (it’s a manual, I need to learn, and it gets about as good of gas mileage as anything for my 35 min commute to and from work everyday). Plus, once the Civic dies (or we have another kid, which ever comes first) – then I’ll get to choose a new family mobile for me to drive.
So here’s the story from my perspective – the practical, un-emotionally-attached-to-cars, Auditor of the family 
Maybe WE will tell his version too…since he is the fun, loves-to-have-an-emotional-connection-to-a-car, non-spreadsheet kind of person. In the end of this story: I think both me and WE came away learning a little something from the other’s world!
Anyway, neither I or WE had ever purchased a car on our own before. We had always had help (i.e. parents making the decision of what to buy and in most cases funding the decision as well). So this was a learning experience for the both of us. We knew that the Civic is on its last leg as well so we definitely wanted to avoid having two car payments. So we set out determined to pay cash for Sam’s new sedan – which gave us a pretty set range of we could afford on the price of the car. As the auditor, I checked our savings in Mint and gave WE a number that he had to stay under. Then we went test driving.
Oh… and we drove. I think we drove almost every mid-size to full-sized sedan on the market. We did our due diligence that’s for sure.
First thing we drove was the 2011 Hyundai Sonata. We loved the new design and this car got really great gas mileage. Seemed like a likely candidate. I loved the drive. Lots of cool features and a slick exterior. But once WE took the wheel, this car was out of the running. Fatal flaw – not enough leg room (width, not length like you might first think) in the driver side. The center console was a sleek curved design that made the driver side console too narrow for WE and his long legs. The other draw back was that we wanted the 2011 design and not the earlier models – but we didn’t really want to pay for a brand new car and have it depreciate the second we drove it off the lot. Ideally, we wanted a practically new 2009-2010 car with very low miles.
Next we drove the Nissan Altima. Very nice car. Very nice price. Decent gas mileage. Decent features. We weren’t in love, but this car was still in the running. The only negative that WE could come up with was the fact that two of his closest friends just barely bought Altimas and he didn’t really want to seem like a ‘groupie’ 
Off to the Ford dealership next door. We LOVED the features in the new Explorer (I especially liked that the third row seats came up and down at the push of a button and WE liked the My Ford Touch of course since he likes anything with a screen)- but we test drove the 2011 Fusion since we wanted a sedan. Fusion was nice – but did we want a Ford? I have to say, they have stepped it up alot! Most memorable feature was that the cup holders had LED lights around the edges that you could change to be whatever color you liked best. Cute – but not really infatuating. In fact, I think cute is exactly how the Fusion experience could be described. Oh yeah, and we liked the salesman there. He was genuine and he was from Sachse. In fact, his grandfather was THE Mr. Sachse that the town is named after. So, sure I guess Fusion was still in the running – kind of. The Fusion did also seem a wee bit smaller in the back for WEjr’s car seat. (Oh, and you better believe that WEjr came driving with us every time so that we could test out the back seat space and the trunk space for the stroller!)
Then WE told me about the Lexus ES350. I didn’t really know where this came from since I didn’t recognize the ‘ES350′ – only the Lexus brand name. WE was super excited about it and I immediately poo poo-ed the idea, of course, since we only had so much money – remember? WE has another friend, though, that bought a used ES a few years ago and WE remembered how comfortable the seats were and how they just ‘caressed’ his bum. Yes, folks – he actually used those words. Mind you, we had been talking about how the Sonata was out only because he hadn’t felt ‘caressed’. Okay, so after a couple days of WE hinting that we should just go test drive the Lexus, I finally conceded. The car was for Sam anyway, right. So we loaded up and headed over to Park Place Lexus. We told our salesman our price range and he recommended that we test drive a 2007 base model. Now, let me just tell you that with a luxury car – the ‘base’ model comes standard with lots of cool features already (bluetooth, leather, memory seats, sun roof, etc). So off we went with Kenny driving around in Plano. First impression for me was the quiet, smooth ride. It was a night and day comparison to the old Hondas we are both used to. WEjr fell right to sleep and the ride was incredible. After I drove it, I (the Auditor!) was sold on the car. Question now was did we want to get an old enough car to get down to our target price range?? So we kept test driving.
Next was the all-famous, everyone-and-their-dog-has-one 2011 Honda Accord. We couldn’t not drive this car since it’s the benchmark that all sedans are compared to. We chose the Honda dealer of McKinney. Now looking back, I wish we had never drove into that place and had just test driven a pre-owned Accord we saw on the Ford lot. Not because we don’t like Hondas (are you kidding, we both drive them and we did NOT need to be sold on the quality of the Honda brand). But we had the most annoying salesman ever. Okay, so he was new so I should cut him some slack – but my biggest complaint was that he wasn’t even listening to us and seemed to be as if he was quoting his training script word for word regardless of what we were saying. Also, this was the first place that the sticker price was not right there on the windshield so we actually went through the whole process of ‘getting the number.’ He made such an annoyingly big deal about ‘the number’ that by the time we got out of there WE had told the guy in no fewer words that the ‘people behind the glass’ must be idiots to have taken so long. Hello, we weren’t even going through the rigamarole of financing and we just wanted to know how much it was going to cost us! Aside from the lame sales process of playing the salesman off of the sales manager for over an hour, the test drive was actually quite nice. We liked the size – although the trunk space was actually a little disappointing. The other drawback was the road noise. As with our Hondas, the new model was loud and bumpy (especially now that we had already experienced the filet mignon, so to speak in the Lexus). Also, the features were scraping the bottom of the barrel in the trim that was in our price range. In the end, this just re-confirmed in WE’s mind that we could go luxury in a pre-owned Lexus with lots of features for about the same price as we could with an Accord. And he was blinded by love for the caress of the Lexus already. Damage was done.
So there I was asking myself – are we really going to end up buying a Lexus??? No way, I thought. Out came the inner, practical, spreadsheet girl. Also, around this same time our friend Trav told us the $ he had paid for his Altima. I was blown away by the great deal that he got and suddenly I wanted to bring down our original target price and go budget. That’s when we test drove the Mazda6.
Now a new Mazda6 isn’t exactly ‘budget’ but a pre-owned was definitely at the bottom of the price range we had discussed. So before long, I was trying to convince WE that we still needed to test drive the Mazda6. WE couldn’t come up with a good enough reason not to, so I finally convinced him. We test drove a 2010 with a meager 7k miles. Oh, and this car was bells and whistles to the max! It was the deluxe grand touring trim in sports-car-red with dark tinted windows. Looked like a million bucks. I thought for sure that WE would go for it especially since it was less $ than the Lexus but still very sporty with great features (bose speakers, leather, sunroof, bluetooth, good gas mileage, etc). The drive was awesome, I thought. WE, however, was not impressed. Like I said, his heart was with another already and couldn’t be swayed by a flashy new entrant to the market. He finally admitted that while he was saying size was the Mazda6 flaw, the real flaw was that it wasn’t the Lexus. I had a theory (that I tried, but failed) to prove on facebook with my friends – that the Mazda6 was just more ‘girlie’ than the Lexus and that’s why WE didn’t go for it. Don’t get me wrong – it was V6 and packed a punch – but she was a cute, rounded exterior design and come on – Mazda’s tagline is “zoom, zoom, zoom” so they are obviously targeting the more feminine consumer…
At any rate, this whole time – WE is out on eBay checking for pre-owned ES350′s and making a spreadsheet of all the ones he could find in a 250 mile radius. Yes, you heard me right – WE was making a SPREADSHEET! Ha, I thought the world was gonna end when I saw this masterpiece of his. He had it sorted ascending by number of miles so he could easily see which cars were a good value for the price. VALUE was the word he kept using and to be honest there was one on the spreadsheet that really did stick out in value. Low miles, in our price range, and right here in Richardson. Problem was by the time we got home that day and headed out to drive it – the darn thing was sold! It was only up on auction for less than 24 hours and that baby was gone. Again, re-solidified in WE’s mind that this was really a value and we would have to act quick in order to get in on that kind of deal. So back to the spreadsheet he went – trolling eBay and Auto Trader all day long and adding cars to the spreadsheet. Suddenly, there popped up another ‘stand out’ in the crowd (there were like 20 other ES350s on this sheet). Less than 20k miles, right at the edge of our $ range, ‘base’ model in Houston. Bam! He was on the phone talking to the guy. First things first: had it been smoked in? How many owners? Carfax report?
The salesman told him it was ‘gunmetal’ black exterior (hard to tell from the pics) and had dark interior. Nice! (Okay, but really where else in the world but in Texas do you hear the color ‘gunmetal’?!?? Geez. But, it was not smoked in, no noticeable exterior or interior damage and before long – WE and I were not sleeping at night trying to make up our minds about whether we should buy the car or not buy the car. In the end – the question was either go budget or go big and WE loved big. And big was a steal of a deal and yes it was actually within the Auditor’s original number by the time you counted the trade-in value of my CRV. So – when all was said and done – the Auditor took out her big fat stamp o’ approval and said go big.
So that is the story of how an average Auditor and Engineer (okay not so average since we had actually saved up quite a stash of cash in preparation for this day) ended up buying a Lexus ES350 for WE to drive for the next 16 years. Ha, by the time WEjr gets it – Lexus probably won’t be cool anymore and certainly not a 2008 model with a million miles on it!
We don’t have any pics yet – but I’m sure that WE will be all over that pretty soon.
oh. ps. The only reason we didn’t test drive a Camry is because apparently all engineers drive Camrys. And WE did NOT want to be part of that crowd. I hope all you engineers out there take harsh offense and give him h*&! for that comment
