Car shopping

[I apologize for the non-John post! I debated whether to include it or not...]

So yesterday Tony and I started the interactive part of car shopping. I had narrowed our top choices down to the Toyota RAV4, Toyota Matrix and Pontiac Vibe (which are the same car: a Toyota Corolla with a wagon body), or the Honda CR-V. In my brain, I've been leaning toward the Matrix-Vibe, because it gives us what we (I) need: enough room for John, Keats, and I to make our twice-daily runs to daycare, with some occasional grocery shopping thrown in. The Civic actually meets this need quite nicely, but it would be great not to have to climb in and out of the back seat to buckle John in. Plus, if we do have kid #2, we would like to have a little more room...

However, in my heart, I've been yearning for the CR-V. But, in these belt-tightening times, I can't discount higher insurance costs, higher costs for tires and service, and of course higher fuel costs.

Yesterday, our task was to look and drive each of our top choices, deciding whether the Matrix-Vibe would be big enough. Tony has been leaning toward the RAV4, but I liked the new CR-V better because it has a lift gate rather than a swing gate.

We went to the Honda dealer in Easley, and had a fabulous saleman, "Bud." To me he kind of looked like a sort of softer Frank Langella. We each drove a 2004 and 2007 Honda CR-V. The latest redesign was in 2007. The later model has more room in the front and back seats, as well as the lift gate and side air bags.

Then we went to the Toyota dealer, also in Easley. Bad saleman, in the sense that he was the stereotypical car salesman. Sigh. There we examined the Matrix and decided it was too small. Just a little larger than the Civic, but it did have 4 doors. Then we test drove a 2007 RAV4. We both liked it. We had actually gone to the wrong part of the dealership and the salesman had driven us to where the SUVs and trucks were, so we were at his mercy to get back to where are car was. That was our big mistake. He brought us into the sales office, I sat down, Tony didn't. He filled out the "4 square sheet" with names and address. Then he went into his manager's office to "get his card" (yeah, right). He was in there about 5 minutes. We had already told him we were ready to buy, this was our first day looking, we were on a 3-month schedule of finding a new car, we were not in a hurry to buy, and we were not ready to talk price, that we didn't know how much we wanted to spend, and that we didn't know what the budget was going to be for this car.
He came out of the office and said "Sit down," and we were both standing by that point. We didn't and we both started to say that we had to go. He said "I just want to show you these numbers." We say no, and we leave, and wait for him outside. Tony walks back over to the car we came over in and I wait near the door. The salesman comes out (his name is John, ugh) and says, "I'm sorry, I don't want you to think I'm pushy, my manager made me do that, blah, blah, blah." It was so CLICHE!

(Update on April 30: We have put the car search on hold until we get back from Dallas!)