The Daily Ping: Car Buying Escapades

Take a look at what you should be prepared for when you visit a dealership. This is not the way it works at all stores...but you should be prepared for anything.

The Daily Ping: Our Car Buying Escapades (10/6/2005): "Our Car Buying Escapades

As Pingers can surmise, we've been looking at cars recently. Our 2001 PT Cruiser was doing fine, but we were worried about the mediocre gas mileage and wanted something that felt a little more solid - something like a Toyota Matrix or its twin, the Pontiac Vibe.

We had seen a Pontiac Vibe we were interested in that was out at a dealer called Jacobs Twin - which is a little ways away. The price was fantastic, and the car had everything we demanded: power everything, cruise, automatic, a/c, et al. No moonroof but we could live with that. Thing is, there was a closer dealership, Grossinger, which had the same car with higher mileage for $3k more. Really."