west coast, drives mostly for shopping.
bit moot now, i took her to the dealerships and tested the Fit and 3. she wanted to be done with it and went with the 3. got a decent price(bit under kellybluebook) but it wasnt like the salesman had to do much work, as she was fairly intent on buying something that day(spent most of the day as bad cop shooting down excessive options and mentioning how many other test drives we still had to do).
the Fit was too torquey at low revs and would have gotten her in trouble in start/stop situations. that and the honda salesman had no ability to do a cold read on us(i'm pretty sure we dont look like chumps or overly excited impulse shoppers). we asked for a basic quote and indicated we still had other cars to look at. he did the standard 'talk to my manager' bit and came back with full sticker. who the hell is going to jump at that when they have 2 or 3 other places to go?
the impreza was ok, but a little underpowered. but since it was part of the same dealership as the mazda, they werent pushing that hard. the mazda salesman at least went for the 'cutting into their own margins' pitch. he did go the full distance and offered a factory $750 discount for going through mazda's financing department's loan and then paying it off 3 months later to avoid the intrest.
i would have preferred to wait a bit to see if there was something a little taller that she might enjoy, but most of them like the kia soul were overpriced for her taste. she ruled out the prius lines because she's done dealing with hybrid battery packs. i tried to get her to look at the mazda 5 but she had done way more research on the 3. if the CRV, xB, or RAV4 had better safety ratings i would have pushed more for something taller.
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