Since I just bought a brand-new car a couple of weeks ago I was interested to see what my thinking was with this post— I may replace my Sedan since that’s 10 years old so it’s still relevant. I had such a good experience a Sentry West Mazda in Shrewsbury I may buy another Mazda. But here’s what I wrote last year.
When I ran a supermarket I was once struck by a class I took discussing sales— it said basically that grocery shopping is the only Adversarial shopping there is— all other forms of shopping the consumer wants to be there, they want to buy something, but with grocery shopping they are they begrudgingly because they NEED food.
That hit home.
But then it occurs to me ALL Shopping is adversarial — they have something you want, you have something they want (money) and you want to part with as little of yours for more of theirs.
Car Shopping is like that. I buy a brand new car every ten years, I’ve used this system for many many years, I bought a brand new Toyota in 1994 which I traded in for a brand new Pontiac in 2003 and that went to a brand new Kia in 2013— well check the calendar kids because it’s time to trade in and get something else. The Toyota was very basic, a cheap car, the Pontiac was a luxury car— it had all the bells and whistles and it had a lot of power, the Kia was back to basics. I also paid CASH for both cars because I don’t like car payments, so what I do is I deposit a “car payment” into a bank account for the car I own and then allow that money to generate interest and use that to buy my next car— it means interest works for me instead of against me with a car loan.
I don’t know if this is a good system or not, but it works for me. I also have an excellent 800+ credit rating, so I get offered some great rates but unless that rate is 0% I don’t see the benefit of it.
So it was that I walked into a showroom to take a look at what the new models have to offer. Kia is owned by Hyundai and I think they actually make good cars. Unlike Honda they also make cars that I don’t consider ugly and they offer a 20 year 200,000 mile warranty. Son’s #2 and #3 recently bought brand new Kia’s and I like both of the cars they chose very much.
My mechanic isn’t a big fan, and he makes a good point, if I’m going with the higher end Kia I’m paying only about $5k less than a Mercedes so why not go that way— again I argue that warranty is really good and this current Kia I’m driving has had no major issues ever. In fact its been such a good car I’m not sure I even need to trade it in— it only has 90k miles on it (we work from home), but the ten years is coming up so I’m getting my head into the game.