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Our 2009 Ford Fusion was totaled out last week after a women thought it would be a good idea to cross the median and plow into our car heading the opposite way. All of the airbags went off and the crumple zones did their job. No broken bones or blood but a good deal of back pain and bruising! We had to find a replacement fairly quickly as my wife needs to drive to work so we spent 2 days car shopping visiting many dealers in the area before we found something we were happy with. My wife generally hates car shopping but she must have been eager to get a replacement because even with the back pain and meds she kept pushing me to visit another dealer. I got to drive a fair number of cars and wanted to leave my feedback here.
The Ford Fusion was a fully loaded car with leather, nav, premium sound, heated seats, etc and my wife's only real requirements were that the replacement have factory navigation, automatic trans and decent utility. My wife was open to most makes outside of Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge, Nissan and Honda. After my last new car purchase I decided that I'm going to avoid buying new due to the depreciation so we were looking at 2-5 year old cars with less than 60k miles on them.
The first cars we looked at were various 2-3 year old Subaru's (Forrester, Outback, Crosstrek). I've heard nothing but good things about Subaru for years now but we didn't even bother test driving the cars because the first thing I noticed when I opened the doors was how cheap and flimsy they felt. My wife felt the same thing and the cheap feeling continued throughout the entire interior. I'd say the whole experience was hugely disappointing. We also looked at VW's as I had a thing for Golfs/GTI's but my wife didn't like anything about them (not to mention the reliability concerns). We stopped by a number of other dealerships but didn't see anything that looked worth our while.
The first car we drove was a 2011 Hyundai Sonata SE with the 2.4, leather, nav, etc . My wife liked this car quite a bit as it drove nice, had a nice interior and decent heft to its doors. The only downside was the black paint which I know from experience is a pain in the ass to keep clean and the car on the lot showed all kinds of light scratches that will require consistent detailing/attention.
We then drove a 2011 Mazda CX-9 Grand Touring which was a fully loaded car. If the Subaru experience was underwhelming this was the exact opposite as this was the nicest Mazda I have ever sat in. All of materials looked and felt good, the doors weren't flimsy, it drove quite nice and handled well for such a large car. I was genuinely expecting a lot less and got a lot more. I was ready to buy the car but couldn't agree on the price and I had lingering questions on whether we need something quite this big (laying the seats down flat and easily throwing a few bikes in the back was a nice thought but not mandatory).
We then drove a 2012 Toyota Camry (not sure on trim but it had leather and nav) which my wife promptly hated. Even in the higher trim it felt like a very cheap car and was surprisingly worst than I expected given what I already knew about Toyota's falling quality. Outside of the reputation for Toyota reliability there really was no redeeming quality to this car.
The last car we drove was a 2012 Hyundai Tucson Limited which was a loaded car with the 2.4, leather, nav, heated seats, premium sound, panoramic moonroof, etc (only thing missing is AWD). This car wasn't even on my radar as I stopped by this dealer to look at Mazda 3's and 6's but the wife ended up falling in love with the Tucson. It drove great, had a strong sound system, surprisingly peppy, fit both of our bikes with the back seats folded, had some weight to its doors and simply didn't feel like a cheap car. The dealer was willing to play ball and we ended up driving away in it. As an added bonus, the next day I went to delete the prior owners bluetooth profile and noticed a familiar name under the device listing. Before I bought my 2010 Hyundai Genesis Sedan I owned a 2011 Hyundai Genesis Coupe and someone with an identical name was part of the local Gen Coupe club so I contacted the guy on Facebook and indeed, he traded the car in to buy something bigger at the same dealer. He bought the car new and took care of it!
The one thing I noticed during the whole experience was that many dealers were very inflexible on sticker pricing. They all participated in the Sonic pricing program and were asking above KBB with very little negotiating room. The CX-9 I was looking at had a KBB dealer sale price between $15,800-$19,100 with a suggested retail price of $18,300. The dealer was asking $19,999 and wouldn't budge more than $300 dollars (my initial offer was $16,500 with the expectation that I'm willing to pay up to $17,500 before tax). This is also probably a bad time of year to go car shopping as the dealers were all fairly busy with holiday shoppers so they probably weren't hurting and could afford to hold out for another buyer.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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While normally the end of the year is the best time to buy a car and get a deal (you are a little early) the improved economy and low gas prices have meant huge increases in car sales over the last month. Just this morning on the news there was a story about a shortage of the most popular SUVs and trucks, especially the size you are looking for. The dealers don't have to make the same kind of discounts now.
I agree with you on the Subies. I find them to be noisy and extremely uncomfortable. They feel like they have very cheap seats. Also the tops of the interior door panels are cheap hard plastic.
The Mazda CX-9 is a nice car but it's a bit of a gas hog.
In case anyone is curious about the condition of the Ford:
The Hyundai Tucson:
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