The wrong one led to the right one
We had a feeling that the orange Sprinter 144” for only $13,900 was too good to be true, but we just had to see it with our own eyes. On Saturday, we went to the dealer and unfortunately saw that it was definitely too good to be true. The person who had attempted to remove the vinyl had used a razor blade and absolutely destroyed the paint, exposing a lot of bare metal that would rust. We decided to pass.
However, this little orange van had been the light that led us to our van. This was a small dealership, and he had listed about 4 of his sprinter vans on Craigslist. The other ones that we saw were either out of our price range or too damaged for us to be interested. But on the lot that Saturday, we saw that he had about 10 Sprinter vans – 6 of which were not listed on Craigslist or his website!
Needless to say, we annoyed the crap out of this guy by asking to look at basically every single one of these Sprinter vans. At one point, he asked, “how many vans are you planning on buying?”
Still, I’m not shy about asking for what I want, and we spent about 3 hours on the lot examining the cars and trying to make sense of the details of each (year, mileage, price) since the dealer kept all the numbers in his head and kept going back and forth on which was which.
Do you know when you meet “The One”?
I immediately liked a particular Freightliner Sprinter van because its badges, grill, and rims were blacked out, its paint was flawless, and there were no major dents or damage to the body. Still, we ended up looking at this van 6th or 7th. All of the other vans we looked at had something, usually damage or high mileage, that made me hesitate.
After looking at several of the vans, we got the keys to the blacked-out Freightliner. At this point, another customer was on the lot also looking at the vans, and eventually took one (that was too high mileage for us) for a test drive. The pressure on to decide if we liked this one, but we didn’t even have to deliberate.
When we unlocked it and climbed inside, we knew. This was the one.
We shared a knowing look. Then I asked the dealer for the year, mileage, and cost of the van.
2010
138,000 miles
$16,900
We were both immediately grateful to our masks for hiding our smiles. This was the van for us, and the price was right.
This was the first, and last, van we took for a test drive from this dealer. It was a short test drive (the salesman directed us to take a small loop around the block). The whole drive was filled with excited talking and lots of smiles.
“Could you see this being the one?” Austin asked me. “Yes. I really can.” I responded, grinning from ear to ear.
When we got back to the lot a mere 5 minutes later, we were sold. The van ran like a dream. Austin, who is a mechanic, got underneath and checked everything out. He popped the hood and looked inside, while I marveled at the cargo area and pushed down my excitement so I could do some cold, hard negotiation. (I may have done too good of a job – Austin wasn’t sure I was excited about this van because how emotionless I was about it).
We convened in our car to discuss. With butterflies in our stomachs, we agreed that we wanted to buy the van. Austin said that when the salesman gave him the price, he was pretty sure it was for the wrong van (since the guy kept all the numbers in his head). I agreed that I had initially thought that as well, but I asked the guy again and he said the same price! We were happy with the price and the condition of the van, and we were ready to pull the trigger.
The negotiation (dun, dun, dunnnnn)
Walking into the dealer’s office, I was struck by the fact that I had never bought a car from a dealer before. I’d only done private sales and always felt comfortable negotiating. I also always had my Dad with me. I’ve only owned 2 cars, and I’ve had my most recent one for 8 years, so it had been a while. Still, I felt confident that I could get some sort of discount if I asked.
Normally, I’d approach a negotiation with an angle. I’d have something to point out that needed to be fixed, or a market value report indicating that the vehicle was worth less than listing price. I lacked reasons for an issue-based argument because the van was nearly flawless. Unfortunately, I also couldn’t use a market value comparison because this particular van’s year and model was not available on Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds. Besides, we felt that based on our research the asking price was pretty fair.
When you’re already happy with the product and the price, you don’t have much negotiation power. Still, I tried. I asked the dealer the price. Exasperated, he told me for the 3rd time what the van cost – $16,900. I asked him if there was any way he could work with us on the price. He knocked it down to $16,390. I tried to get him to go to $16,000 even, but I didn’t give a lower counteroffer as I didn’t feel like I had any reason to back up that ask. He laughed and said no.
Oh well, saving $600 by asking one question ain’t bad! That’s a hell of an hourly rate.
Putting down the deposit
We agreed on the price and had him draw up the documents while we headed to an ATM to withdraw the $500 we were going to deposit. We would have bought the van that day, but it was Saturday and both the credit union we were financing with and the insurance company were closed. So we agreed that we would put down the deposit and come back on Monday to pay in full and pick up the van.
Side note: If you’re looking at vans but don’t think you’re ready to buy yet, still make sure that your cash is readily accessible. It’s kind of like when you go to the pound – you’re bound to come home with a puppy. We had to do a bit of transferring money around to get the cash ready because most of it lived in online savings accounts that don’t have physical branches (which makes it difficult to impossible to pull out several thousand dollars on the same day). Usually, you have to transfer from these accounts to a bank with a physical branch, so that you can go into the bank and take out the money. Those transfers can take 2-3 days (and often don’t go over the weekend).
After putting down a $500 deposit and signing the purchase order (which we needed to send to the credit union to get our financing), we drove home with a mix of nervousness and excitement. We were so jazzed that we worked on the 3D model for the rest of the night, replicating the bulkhead door and adjusting our layout to remove the passenger swivel seat and change the couch to an L-shape to accommodate two. We slept like babies Saturday night, exhausted from the big emotional day and contented that our van search was over and we had found the perfect van at a good price.
[Screenshot of van design]
Sunday was a blur mostly filled with van-planning and worrying that something would happen that could mess up the purchase of this beautiful van that we knew was The One. Neither of us slept well because we were stressed that something could go wrong with the van. The worrying was warranted, given the events of Monday…
… Continued in the next journal entry >>
P.S. This means that our van-iversary is exactly 6 months after our anniversary! That’ll make it easy to remember 😊
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