AAY – Car Buying 4: Driving Mr. Mitchie

Last weekend I drop by for the test drive and meet Salesguy 1. He’s the “Internet Sales Manager”, mid-30’s-ish, very personable as your general salesweasel must be. I want to take control and set the basic rule for our first meeting.  I start off with “I’m not buying a car today. I just want to check it out.” “No problem,” is his response. We go out to get the car. He pulls out a very nice looking silver one. I like silver. We start going over all the stuff it has. Having owned a ’01 RAV4 for many years I’m very impressed with what they’ve done with the model over the next 11 years. Sure, it’s mostly small things as the overall basic design hasn’t changed – it’s still a small SUV, but taken all together it’s quite the improvement. And then there’s the fact it’s the top-end Limited model vs. low end base I’ve been driving. There are lots of extra goodies because of that. I try to make mostly neutral-ish sounding noises. At one point he pulls out a pocket knife to fiddle with some recessed tab to show me some neat storage areas the back cargo area has. I recognize the butterfly mark on the blade: Benchmade. He rises a couple notches in my estimation. You gotta give “props” to a guy who carries a Benchmade knife.

I get behind the wheel and Salesguy give me the “key”. It’s just a fob with three buttons: lock, unlock, and “panic”. To start the car you step on the brake pedal and push a button. The car recognizes the fob as the electronic key. Neat. As a guy who’s locked his keys in his car a few times I REALLY like a system where I don’t even have to take them out of my pocket. Off we go – I give it the usual gas and we SURGE forward. Yeah, two more cylinders makes a significant difference. I get it out on the road and get a feel for how handles differently from my car. Everything is buttery smooth and I LOVE the improved acceleration. The ride isn’t as soft as Mom’s Mercedes, but damn, it’s not that far off actually. Salesguy remarks that he doesn’t have all that much to say about the car since I already know so much about the RAV4, which is true. He does get to point out a few of the other things we didn’t look at before we went out though. It’s a fairly short test drive. I WANT this car. Any lingering thoughts about going with a used Mercedes disappear. 

Overall, it was very hands-off and not at all pushy with this guy. I really dislike high-pressure sales tactics so he rises a couple more notches.  I get the feeling I can work with this him. We head over to his cubicle to discuss things further.