Miss Piggy Lunchbox

First, a conversation with the sales guys:

Sales Guy 1: You don’t want a Civic. It’s more expensive, plus your insurance will go up: Civics are the most stolen car in the country.
Me: What’s number two on that list?
Sales Guy 1: I’m not sure, but there’s not a Toyota in the top 10.

Later, after much hand-shaking, a conversation with the finance manager:

Finance Manager: Here’s the cost breakdown
Me: What’s this $200 window etching thing? Nobody mentioned that before.
Finance Manager: Oh, that was in the monthly payment I just quoted you.
Me: Yeah, but it wasn’t in the base price and that’s all anybody talked about until now.
Finance Manager: Nobody told you about this? This is great. This is us etching the VIN into the glass so thieves can’t file it off. You want this because Toyotas are the most stolen car in the country.  We put this on because cars kept getting stolen off of our lot.
My Baby: Great…and you passed the cost on to us.

So, when you want me to buy your car, nobody steals it.  When you want me to pay for the security thing you put on to protect your inventory, then thieves are everywhere stealing these things.

(It makes for a worse blog post, but they did take off the cost of the window etching after I complained.)

Update: According to Insurance Journal and IntelliChoice, the National Crime Insurance Bureau’s list of top 10 stolen cars in 2008 is:

1. 1995 Honda Civic
2. 1991 Honda Accord
3. 1989 Toyota Camry
4. 1997 Ford F-150 Series Pickup
5. 1994 Chevrolet C/K 1500 Pickup
6. 1994 Acura Integra
7. 2004 Dodge Ram Pickup
8. 1994 Nissan Sentra
9. 1988 Toyota Pickup
10. 2007 Toyota Corolla

I’d be pissed if I didn’t expect that everything a car salesperson says is a lie.  Of course, nothing stated was really a lie…but I’d surmise a misprepresentation of what was known.  My point was I’d be pissed if I’d based my purchase decision on it.

Tags: car dealers, My Baby, Seattle

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Seattle, car dealers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.