Saturday, April 9, 2022

Covid Car

our BMW X3
Our "newest" car is a BMW X3 that was purchased in 2015. While it stills runs great and is in pretty good condition inside and out, we are closing in on 90,000 miles on it. We like to take driving vacations, and a reliable car is a necessity for that. More importantly, the GPS system is way out of date, and is costly to update. And while our car does have some safety features, it lacks the latest innovations designed to keep us safer on the roads.

A few months ago we decided to trade it in on the purchase of a new BMW X3. A big plus of going this direction is that these cars are built in South Carolina. As you have no doubt read, it is not a buyers market right now. Due to Covid, there is a shortage of parts as well as labor. Many dealerships are charging above the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) just because they can. The best thing you have going for you is a trade-in, because if people can't get a new car they at least want a car that is new to them.

Auto shopping is a challenge right now. You are definitely not going to buy a 2022 vehicle right off the lot. They just don't exist. The moment an unclaimed new vehicle arrives at the dealership, it is immediately snapped up. While we didn't mind ordering a car to get our exact specifications, it was critical that we be able to test drive the same make and model first. As a vertically-challenged person, the seat fit is the most important feature on a car for me. 

We went to our local BMW dealership to begin the shopping process. It is hard to assess car colors when there are none on the lot to view. Added to that are the interior trim packages, which are also not available. We finally settled for looking at a used X3 to get a semblance of the look we were trying to put together. 

Finally one day we got a call from our salesman letting us know that a 2022 X3 was arriving that day if we wanted to test drive it. But we needed to hurry before it was sold. So we dropped everything to get to the dealership. While it was not an all wheel drive model, it was close enough for me to see how the seat fit and to test the acceleration on the highway. 

We sat down with our guy and built out the car online. After negotiation, we were able to come to a bottom line price with trade-in that was acceptable to us and the dealership. The car will be ready next week, and we are super excited about it. We hope the exterior car color and interior trim packages are what we are expecting them to be. Our Covid Car - what could possibly go wrong?

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