3.14.2008

What's in a name

The time has come for us to buy a second car; a minivan. As reliable and serviceable as our little Suzuki Esteem is, we just can't fit another car seat into it, not to mention all the camping gear we are slowly accumulating. We've been talking about this for a while now, and just last Monday made our first foray onto an actual car dealership lot. In fact, this is my first foray ever. I've never been in a position to buy a car before and have never test drove anything. Rob's an old hand at this so I let him do most of the talking. Anyway, what I never realized before is that all car salesmen have strange names. At least, I must assume they do. We've looked at three different brands of vans this week with three different car salesmen, each with an odd or unusual name. Sno showed us the Mazda, Butch showed us the Kia, and Cleve showed us the Toyota. Is there a rule about this in the car salesman code? Do they change their names to make them more memorable? I don't understand. Can it be coincidence that three different men in different parts of the state who have the same job and have weird names are the three men that we happen to run into on the dealership lot? 

In case you were wondering, we like the Toyota the best, but it is pretty much out of our price range unless we get one that is older then we want to go. The mazda and kia were ok, but the quality is obviously laking compared to the Toyota. Cleve says that he's going to look real hard for us, even calling other dealers in town, to find a van that fits our requirements as far as price, year, and miles. We'll see how hard that really is. 

3 comments:

Nicola said...

Good luck with the whole car buying process. We haven't been brave enough to buy a minivan yet, we are waiting until we are done with our other car payment. But I totally agree with your opinion of the Toyota. If I could choose one today it would be a Toyota. Have you considered looking on cars.com or through craigslist. That is how we found our camry. Oh and I do think it is a rule that car salesman have funny names. We have noticed that too. (=

Letty said...

I too remember having odd salesmen when we were looking at getting our van. Good luck on that one. So by saying you need to add another car seat...dose that mean something???
Just curious. We too are in the thinking of getting pregnant stage and when we bought our van a year+ ago I was considering the same things.
Good Luck!
I would say that your little car has really been a trooper.

Katie said...

Yeah, we looked at mini vans and I like the Toyotas too. THen I didn't want a car payment. It's so nice not to have one! Now we for sure have to get one sometime this year. I don't think 3 carseats will fit into the back of my car... Good luck.