Went to the office this morning. We are hoping to hear something about the car this morning although no one called me. I went home for lunch, still no call. Didn’t find out anything until after lunch was over and I went back to work.
They called from the second dealer to tell us that while we could get the car they could not do anything about the insanely low value of our trade in and on top of that they would need around seven thousand dollars of down payment. Ugh. The main reason that we were looking into doing the car now rather than the middle of next year was the awesome financing now with the zero down and no payments for four months deal that GMAC has on right now. If we have to put even one thousand down it effectively destroys the reason for us trying to get this deal – that is to alleviate the financial stress caused by having the two houses and the apartment at the exact same time. So that is a no go.
Later in the day I got a very apologetic email from the first dealer. They had dealt with the web designer and the web site no longer had the wrong hours on it and they had worked out all of the financing and had sweetened the pot a bit. Somehow, even though they too were using GMAC, they were getting us the deal that we wanted, supposedly. How this was possible I have no idea. But given that the second dealer wasn’t an option at all and we are a little bit panicked about what to do about a car as we will be in no better shape in the middle of next year than we are now I decided that I had better go in and talk to them about it and see what we are able to do.
So after work I drove up and went to the original dealer. They had the financing all ready with everything that we had asked for. We got the zero down, the zero percent and the no payment for four months. Yesterday they had tried to tell us that it was only available for three months. Today, that was fixed. The price of the car had come down almost two thousand as well in the mean time and they threw in a free oil change to apologize for the misunderstanding. Unlike the second dealer who would have had to have traded for the car, this dealer had the car on the lot, all ready to go.
So I decided to just get the car. It fixes a lot of things both logistically and financially. So now we own a brand new 2011 GMC Acadia SLE in Summit White with the towing package (we didn’t want the towing package, it just came on the car that met our criteria.) The car had just fifty-four miles on the odometer when they turned it over to me. The only extra option that I went for was the GMPP 5 year / 100K warranty and protection plan. As we are financing the car for a very, very long time it seemed prudent. There is no way for us to trade this in anytime soon. This is a pretty big investment for us.
This car is our first with OnStar or with an XM Satellite radio. We will see how these work out for us. The car has no GPS which I am very disappointed about as I really like having a GPS and especially the live map feature while driving. But we do get turn by turn directions with the OnStar and both of our phones have mapping and GPS features so we aren’t without options while driving. I only use the GPS occasionally and we do have a third party Garmin to use as well when it is needed.
Dominica was pretty surprised when I pulled up out front with the Acadia. She had no idea that I would be able to come home with the car tonight. She didn’t even know for sure that I was buying it. She really wanted to get it but we were really nervous about spending all of that money. But if we don’t get it I am not sure what we will do once the new baby arrives. So I just decided that having that stress taken away was important given that she is pregnant and will obsess about it if I don’t just deal with it.
Dominica was sitting on the bed with Liesl watching television when I popped in and tossed her her keys. She was confused for a minute before she realized that they were GMC keys. Since I didn’t have the X3 with me to trade in she really couldn’t figure out what had happened and where the Mazda was. I had just left the Mazda there and will get it tomorrow morning when we drop off the X3 and the title.
So for our first night out we took the Acadia and drove out to Denny’s for dinner. Liesl was very excited to have the new car and to get to go to Denny’s. She loves their ranch dressing.
So the search for a new vehicle is over. We are now, much more than before, suburbanites. In just a few weeks we went from renting in the heart of Las Colinas to owning a little 1970’s suburban house in the most quaint suburban neighbourhood and from driving a BMW with no space to driving an eight passenger family cross-over made in America (Lansing plant.) (It is an eight passenger vehicle but we got the seven passenger option which is vastly more useful.)
Tomorrow Souder is coming over and we are going to start doing some work on the house so that we can really start to get some use out of it. Not having a way to use my desktop is pretty much a non-stop disaster that needs to be addressed rather quickly. If we don’t get that desktop up and useful I might never manage to get any work done!
We are very excited to have the new car. That was a large point of stress in our lives. Having it in time to drive to New York for Christmas is great too.