We have been looking at replacements for Chuck’s 1998 Ford Explorer for a while now. It has 100,000+ miles on it, and needs some work. He needs reliable transportation that can go long distances safely. So we’ve been looking. Which I hate. It involves the bottom feeders of the world, IMHO: car salesmen. We started out at Cerritos Auto Square, an amazing place with a bunch of auto dealers. We went to Honda first and got the hard sell from Norm Reeves Honda where they took all of our information before letting us test drive anything (that should have been a sign to flee but we stuck it out). We test drove the Honda Pilot and were immediately impressed – it drove like a car! The Explorer has always driven like a truck – a hard, bouncy ride that on corners always felt just this side of tipping over. Nothing like that feeling with the Pilot. Score one for Honda! Then we went over to Ford and checked out the new Explorers and Mountaineers (the Mercury flavor of the Explorer – why they make two identical cars with different names and pricing defeats me). This was a really unimpressive experience. The Explorer still drove like a truck and the interior if anything was less appealing than in Chuck’s 1998 Explorer. And it still felt like it was going to tip over in turns. Oh, and the gas mileage sucked. So then it was on to Nissan, where we looked at the Pathfinder. Not bad, but not quite what he was looking for. Finally we went to Toyota where we test drove the 4 Runner. Now we had a real horse race on our hands! The 4 Runner was by far the nicest of the mid-size SUVs, next to the Pilot. The V8 version was certainly as nice, and with the bigger engine, faster. But the gas mileage once again sucked, so we ended up back with the Honda Pilot.
We didn’t go back to Norm Reeves Honda however. After our test drive there, we were inundated by daily (sometimes several times a day) phone calls from them asking when we’d be back in and if we were still interested. After several days of this, Chuck finally told them that if their intention was to lose customers, they had developed a really good technique. That shut them up (mostly). They only REALLY gave up when Chuck said that he wanted to order a customized Pilot from the factory. They didn’t seem to like that at all and quit calling.
So we ended up at Long Beach Honda, where they have very nice sales people who are only a little used-car-sales-type-ish. Chuck went in by himself (as I absolutely cannot STAND the buying a car negotiation nonsense) and spent almost three hours wheedling them into giving him exactly what he wanted, even managing to get an eight year 100,000 warranty thrown in. He also ended up with a great recipe for penne pasta and chili – not sure how that happened, but I’m not complaining. We are now waiting for the car, which should be here today, in all its fully equipped glory. One really trick feature: it has a rear view camera, so when you put it in reverse the nav system screen shows the view from the rear of the car on its screen. Our friend Bev and I were really jazzed by this feature, so after we test drove it, she jumped out, ran behind the car and laid down so I could take a picture of her, as she appeared on the nav system screen. Cool!