New Car

Jenn and I have been pondering the idea of getting a new van for some time. We drive a Pontiac Montana, which is an eight passenger, nicely loaded van with plenty of space. We've been relatively lucky with maintenance over the past six or so years as we've only had to replace the usual, tires, brakes,etc over that time and one cooling fan.
My goal was to sell the van while we could still get a decent return on it and give Jenn, Lil and the kids a newer more reliable vehicle for crossing the Rockies this summer when I go to Washington. We started our car search on Monday late in the evening. We went to the Toyota dealership here in Norman. It was late, so we just talked to the dealer a bit and he showed us the van and it's features. We still wanted to see what Honda had to offer before making any decisions.
We wanted an eight passenger with dual automatic sliding doors.
We use an all military online bank, so I was looking for interest rates when I happened onto a build your new car type of deal. I started building a Toyota, and in the end, it promised $250 below MSRP if I went to a USAA (name of the bank) certified dealer. So I went to the dealer, which was located next to Tinker AFB about a 45 minute drive. We make that drive anyway to use the commissary, so no big deal.
When I got there, the dealer found out what I was looking for and started walking out toward the
vans. He didn't say anything to me, like finding out what features I was looking for.




We got to the first van and he asked if I wanted to look inside. I asked him if it had dual power sliding doors. It didn't, so he took me to another that did and repeated his original question. I asked if it was eight passenger. It wasn't. It turned out that there wasn't an eight passenger on the lot, so he wanted to order one for me.
Think of the used car salesman that is usually in the media. The gelled and slicked back hair, kinda gross looking, well, that was this guy. He needs to go to the movies and do the opposite of what he sees.
I told him that I was familiar with the Sienna, and wanted to talk about cost. An hour later, we still weren't talking about money. Jenn finished shopping at the commissary and came over and we finally got to the price tag to include the USAA discount.
I wasn't that impressed with what they were offering still plus they were including our old van as a trade-in. They wanted to give us $2500 for the van, when I know I can sell it for 7-9 thousand. Wasn't happening!



Then when Jenn told them that she had no intention of buying a car that day, the salesman went into this long dragged out deal about how reliable Toyota's are and went into every mechanical feature that it had. Thirty minutes later, Jenn got up and left. The dealership gave me one lower final offer, and I left.
The next day I tried calling them to talk again, but they would promise to call me back and then they wouldn't do it.
Jenn and I went to test drive a Honda Oddesey, but it lacked one feature beyond being more expensive. The middle seat in the middle row isn't built to hold a car seat. No thank you! Depending on the state, Jonathan still needs a booster, there is no way we were willing to have a seat that was off limits to a child in a car seat, especially that particular seat.
So we went to back to the original Toyota dealer. They still weren't being pushy like the other dealership. We talked about numbers, and they agreed to let us see the invoice and sell the car for $500 above the invoice price including 1.9% financing. So we decided to go for it, only to find out that they showed us the wrong invoice. The van we were looking at was more loaded than the invoice they showed us. They still honored the original agreement and we ended up getting the van for only $270 above invoice. So now we own a Toyota Sienna, and I drive a Toyota Corolla as a commuter car. We're an all Toyota family.
We're happy, this is the first new car that either of us have ever had, so now comes the task of selling our old van.