Recession Car Shopping

As you probably know already if you're reading this, Mike and I are expecting twins this summer. (No, really, that's not an April Fool's joke.) That means that not only are we going to go from being a one-car to a two-car family, but also that our second car is almost certainly going to be a minivan. (And believe it or not, we're both actually excited about that -- minivans are nothing much to look at from the outside, and we won't even mention the terrible gas mileage, but the interior features are awesome! All the room! The folding seats! The sliding doors! Did I mention all the room??)

Last weekend we went out to take a look at some of the options. I figured that it would be useful to do this when 1) we're not planning to buy it right away, so there's less pressure, and 2) I'm not so enormous that it's a hassle to get in and out of vehicles.

It's a strange experience to be car shopping in these economic conditions. The first dealership we went to (Mazda/Hyundai) didn't actually have a minivan on the lot and didn't know when they were going to get one, but that didn't stop them from sitting us down with a brochure and even introducing us to multiple managers. It's always a little uncomfortable to deal with car salesmen, because I always have the impression that they're usually on the edge of being fired if they don't do all of the sales tricks that their managers want them to do. (And since I teach persuasion, I know most of the tricks and don't have a lot of patience with them.) But the people at this place were clearly on edge -- as Mike said, you could smell the desperation. We felt bad for them but were glad to get out of there.

Then we went across the street to the Toyota dealership, and it was a much better experience. Our salesman was a very straightforward Indian guy -- we told him what we wanted, and he showed us right to the model that had all those features. We asked about looking at the next model up (the more "luxury" edition, just to compare), and the answer was, "you can't, we don't have any, and we probably aren't going to get any." We did a test drive, and it was great. We're still going to look at some other brands, but I think we both really liked it, and the price was more reasonable than we expected.

But then here's the other part of this crazy economy -- the salesman warned us that it was becoming harder and harder to actually get the minivans, because in response to the slowdown in demand, the car factories and distributors have also slowed down production quite a bit (thus the lack of any minivans on the lot across the street). They could get one for us now, but it might take a while if we wanted particular things (like a specific color), and they couldn't make any guarantees for a couple of months from now. Now, it's possible that this was also just a sales pitch (scarcity technique!), but I actually tend to believe him. We're willing to take the chance on waiting a bit, but it is a little bizarre that even if people want to start buying cars, they may have a tougher time getting what they want. (He also told us that they weren't getting many RAV-4s in, even though they were good sellers -- if you want a Camry or a Corolla, you're golden, but anything other than that is tougher going.)