When we arrived in Florida on Sunday, 5 days ago, we had not yet decided whether to buy or rent a car for Jett. We will be here for just 4 months and hauling a car north, while possible, is a hassle we didn’t need. On the other hand, renting a car also had a downside in their annoying rules (no pets, no smoking) and risks (uncertainty as to how an accident would be handled and whether we would get nailed for “loss of use” as rental companies are now wont to do). Close call. If we could find a rental like we had in San Jose – a decent car for under $600 a month – that likely would have been our chosen option. But in Fort Myers I could not find any such vehicle for much less than $900.
So, at 11am on Monday, we started looking for a dealer, thinking that we would go see some cars at lunch and mull it over a bit. We settled on AutoNation of Fort Myers, a large Toyota dealership not far from the RV park. I browsed its used car inventory and saw a number of vehicles that would fit the bill.
Off we went. We found the place, found a spot to stash the truck and walked into the showroom. And were informed that we were in the wrong place… the used car dealership was across the street. We were about to exit when we were introduced to Ezequiel Garcia, one of their used car salesmen who was about to head across the street. “Follow me,” he said. And we did.
But getting there was tricky. We had to take a right onto a busy road, then immediately cross 3 lanes of traffic to get into the left turn lane, then take a U-turn. Because he didn’t want to endanger us in pulling into the heavy traffic, we waited what felt like forever to get onto the road. And making a U-turn in our beast of a truck is always an adventure. But we made it, arriving about 1pm.
I asked about a Toyota Yaris that I had seen advertised, but it was gone. We looked at a Mustang that got Jett really excited, until she found out it was standard transmission. We looked at a couple more, then found a basic Corolla that we liked enough to do a test drive. It drove great and came with a 6-month warranty which would be fine for our expected 4-month term of ownership. The only negative was that it lacked power windows and locks, but Jett said she could deal with that for four months. We parked the car and were about to go into the building to talk turkey when Jett spotted another Yaris. This one had power everything, just 57K miles and came with the original warranty that was good to 100K miles. Ding, ding, ding! A winner! A short test drive convinced us that that car would suit us better than the Corolla. And we were going to finance it all, so the extra $1,500 wasn’t a deterrent.
In the Old Days the process would go like this:
- settle on the terms for the car
- go to the bank or credit union to arrange the loan
- get a cashier’s check
- go back to the dealer to buy the car
- go to your insurance agent to arrange insurance
- take all the papers to the Registry and stand in line for an hour or two to get the plates
- go back to the dealership, put the plates on the car and drive away
The process could take the better part of a week.
For our purchase, we negotiated the terms, the salesman disappeared to work up the sales papers, came back a few minutes later, we shook hands, we called an insurance agent, bought insurance on our Visa, he faxed the insurance documents to the dealership, we went into the finance manager’s office, signed the papers, he handed the plates to the salesman, he put them on the car and we drove away.
We drove off the lot at 4:30pm. Total time at the dealership: 3.5 hours. Add in another two hours for doing the internet search and getting to the dealership and the total time required to buy a $12,000 car was less than 6 hours. Nice!
In truth it wasn’t quite as smooth as described. The hitch was the taxes and fees. I was SHOCKED at the high Florida sales tax and registration fee. Add in the mandatory $700 dealership document processing fee and these one-time extras exceeded $2,000! I just about walked out the door. As I explained to Ezequiel, that was, to me, an extra $500 per month as I expected to keep the car for just 4 months. Add in about $100 for insurance and the depreciation cost and the total monthly cost of ownership was hovering right around the $850 mark, which would make owning just as expensive as renting.
So they knocked $1,000 off the purchase price for me.
I guess I was playing hardball without even knowing it.
Anyway, we now own a steel-blue 2008 Toyota Yaris. Jett loves it. And we are already thinking about how to take it north with us.
Little Blue, parked next to Big Red