4kids and lisa -- I'm BACCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!
The new baby is in the garage -- wiped her down after we got home and I backed into the garage. I'm sorry I won't have pictures until this weekend (as soon as the weather turns decent here!), but I want to show you all how beautiful she is. I guess you'd like to hear the story of yesterday, leading up to today's purchase (yes, I decided to put my own skin into this one) and return home. After perusing our wonderful forum yesterday, I got the idea that I should really make a list of things to bring with -- various documents and things -- as well as a list of "to-do's" (like making sure our 177 minutes of OnStar calling gets transferred, canceling our month-to-month OnStar on the Olds, stuff like that) -- as well as making sure I had the FINAL #'s from the dealer so I would not be surprised today when we went to sign paperwork.
I am so glad I did this -- and I'll try to share my list with everyone so you can maybe add to it things that you might need to have or do or change. It made a good part of the whole deal that much less stressful. But honestly, if you asked my wife, I was STRESSED, ANXIOUS, DEPRESSED, WORRIED -- well, just about everything that you can think of. Most of all, I was concerned what I would think of the Blue Gold Crystal (because I really had my heart set on Platinum, which is what we ordered). At least the interior was the same, Ebony.
We left about 6:30am and actually made very good time -- routed ourselves around some construction and made it to the dealer in about 3.5 hours. The funny story there was that we had a detour in MI that took us off the highway, through back roads (literally) that were mud, for about 4 miles! I about flipped out -- we drove through some of the most depressing looking areas that I've even seen in rural America (burned out trailer homes, trash, abandoned cars and trucks sitting on people's property -- it was unreal). Of course, driving to pick up a near $44K vehicle really got me thinking and made me depressed that there are so many in America with so little, and here we are going to pick up a new Enclave that none of these folks would ever afford or dream of in a million years.
Anyway -- it was about 190 miles from home. Pulled into the dealer (nice little town too, Allegan, MI) and there she was, sitting there all clean and pretty and shiny. It's really hard to explain this color and even when I take some snaps and post them for you, I'm sure you won't be able to really tell -- this is truly a chameleon color, sometimes looking a dark platinum, then looking a very light blue/silver and then in certain light, it has this really cool gold color in the background. Weird -- but very nice. About the color, my teen daughters were both very happy with "their" choice. They didn't want another silver car or white car -- this was a color they thought was cool and when they saw it for the 1st time, they were really happy.
So -- though I spent a while with the finance guy yesterday to get the #'s from him, there were a few surprises -- one yesterday, one today. Yesterday's surprise was that in spite of them agreeing to my trade (I sent digital pics so they could quote me a solid price -- I thought it was a fair price), they would not lease using the GMAC "buy rate" which is just under 8% (.00333 is the money factor). They were marking it up to 9% -- which really ticked me off -- and I had some harsh words with the finance guy, who proceeded to cry to me about selling their 1st Enclave (they are a very small dealer, this has been on order for months) @ Supplier when they could have gotten far more. Cry me a river was my basic reply -- I didn't hold anyone at gunpoint to do this. From what I know, the surrounding area has had some real financial hardships, so I think when this Gen'l Manager agreed to the Supplier, he figured a bird in the hand of a sure sale and my top credit rating caused him to do the deal. So, I was upset at not being able to lease at what I thought were still high rates -- pushed me over the edge and I decided last night to purchase. Along with my trade, I wrote a decent check to bring my 36 mo GMAC 5.9% payment to about what the lease would have been. In my mind, I figured it would make me feel better to know after 3 yrs, it's mine, it's still under warranty and I can sell it and hopefully have a nice value to it because of so many paying MSRP or MSRP+ now.
This is a really long message -- let me continue it in another reply -- sorry and thanks for your patience with me ;D.