well, my wife is graduating from pharmacy school in 2 weeks, and one thing she had always planned on doing upon graduation was getting a new car. she had had her '98 civic since new, and while a good and reliable car, it wasn't exactly anything special. it accumulated a full college career's worth of dings and scratches along its flanks, and while it had been religiously maintained and dead-reliable, the mileage was creeping up into the mid-80k range....and the new car itch had struck.
we got back from our honeymoon 2 1/2 weeks ago and had taken a couple of additional days off work to get settled and recuperated and whatnot....and while out and about getting bank accounts merged and cell phone plans combined and all that stuff we decided to go visit a few car dealers. she had originally wanted a G35 coupe even before we met and before i bought my '04 G35c, but our heinous dealer experience coupled with the lemon-esque flavor of mine turned us off permanently to infiniti. so, off to visit acura, lexus, audi, bmw, etc....
first drove a TL and a TSX back to back. the TSX was more comfortable for her size-wise just b/c it was nearer to the size of the civic, but we both knew a couple days in the larger TL and it would feel just as "right" while having a heck of a lot more features, power, and space. there were no new IS300's on the lot, but we drove a certified used one that she didn't like - it felt "cramped" to her. drove through the bmw lot and audi lot and didn't see anything that interested her, and a quick side visit to a volvo joint didn't turn up any other options. at the end of the day, she decided she wanted the TL.
so, we decided to start doing some preliminary pricing work to prepare for purchasing something in about 4-6 weeks. a friend had just bought a TL himself and gotten a good deal, so i used his number as a baseline and sought out "best offers" from several internet managers at regional dealerships. within a week, i had established that my local dealer was meeting or beating everyone else's, and that they seemed pretty hungry to do something before month's end.
i talked it over w/ my wife, and we decided to go for it...so last week i finalized the numbers, we decided to trade her civic (instead of keeping it or selling it privately) since they were giving us a pretty good trade-in number, and on saturday we went in to do the paperwork and take delivery of a satin silver/quartz leather '05 TL (5AT, non-navi).
i must say, that was the easiest car purchase i've made - and JV will attest that i've made quite a few in recent years.
having the deal worked out via email saved much of the back-and-forth grief on-site, and getting a deal we felt comfortable with up front prevented any buyer's remorse the day after. they even gave us another TL off the lot to go run errands in and kill time while they finished setting up the paperwork so that we wouldn't be twiddling our thumbs in the waiting area for 2 hours....
so far, we're loving it. it's an auto and FWD, instead of my preferred RWD/manual configuration, but for her - it's perfect. love the bluetooth, love the dvd-audio stereo...and the interior quality is noticeably better than my infiniti's was. ride quality and power are nice - much better than the TSX on both counts, imho - though that's not really a surprise given the larger mass to help w/ bump absorption and 70 more HP.
the only bad thing is, i'm jealous of the new car smell again (my current JGC was purchased used 2 months ago - no new car smell there!).
guess i'll just have to cross my fingers and hope i can get my hands on an '06 miata this fall.
