After the Thomas incident I figure that the easiest was to get a car is to jack one. Walk up to some hipster doofus in Yaletown and knock them over the head with a sockfull of pennies. I’ve played a lot of Grand Theft Auto; should be a piece of cake. If we were looking for a Prius or maybe a Mini, I totally would have done it…
Anyway, we had decided to shelve the car thing for a bit. The Olympics are coming and you can’t drive anywhere anyway. “If something good comes along, we’ll move on it.” That was our plan; do nothing and see what happens.
I kept browsing the various sites and wasn’t seeing much activity. The same cars, week after week but nothing new. Just a bunch of Ricky’s asking a lot of money for high mileage cars.
I did go back and forth with a (seemingly) nice guy over a 2009 Mazda 3. It was pretty much everything we were looking for except that there was no sunroof and he was on the Island. I was going to take a trip over there but when I contacted him again, ‘a buyer was arranging financing’.
I wasn’t too put out. It was more than we wanted to spend and I really wanted the sunroof. Eventually, said car with a sunroof appeared.
That was all I needed to see as I was determined to not have another one slip away. I left work at noon and got on the bus to go have a look at the car. It was nice and the sales guy didn’t seem to be greasy at all.
Leather wouldn’t be my first choice but whatever; they’re heated and that was a must to prevent interior temperature related disagreements.
A test drive was taken followed by negotiations where we negotiated with each other over the price. After some back and forth, we agreed on a price. How novel…
So the non-greasy sales guy goes to do some paperwork while I hang out in the car. He’s gone quite a while and by now I’ve played with all the buttons and sat in all the seats. My coffee empty, I get out and am admiring the car from the outside. “Sweet…”
A semi-sketchy woman who was washing the cars on the lot comes up to me:
Semi-sketchy car washer: “Is that a manual? Never driven a Mazda with a manual before”
Me: “Nope, semi-automatic. It’s a nice car to drive.”
Semi-sketchy car washer: “Hmmph. Zoom-zoom. More like 0 – 60 in 1.4 minutes”
Me: *WTF*
At this point the the non-greasy sales guy came up with an arm full of paperwork and told me that he was ready to take me into the Sales Managers office. I turned around to look for the Semi-sketchy car washer to ask her to do a good job washing the car but she had disappeared to the furthest recesses of the lot. Turns out that she was capable of 0 – 60 in something less than 1.4 minutes…
Now maybe it’s just me but if I’m washing used cars and I see a guy eyeing up a ‘76 Pinto, I’ll either say something nice about the car or steer clear of him entirely. Perhaps there’s a reason why she’s washing used cars…
Anyway, the car is awesome and we are super happy with our new purchase. We’ve had it over a week and *touch wood* it hasn’t been broken into and/or stolen. Of course I haven’t been down in a few days to check…
midbach it's all about me Mazda 3
