[fintstone]

The posts about buying/selling a car are lost on me. I always know exactly what car (make, model, year, color) I want to buy (new or used). If new, I simply wait for a dealer to get one like I want and go down and tell them I want to buy it and this is what I will pay. If they annoy me too much or cannot make the deal, I just go home. I don't even go to the local car lots before I am ready to buy during business hours...so I don't have to talk to them. I go by in the evening or on Sunday when they are closed and take a look. If I go there during business hours...I am ready to buy and just need to close the deal.

Although we used to buy old cars as targets of opportunity (that we drove past), I have bought most of my current crop of cars slightly used...all over the internet. I found what I wanted and told the seller what I would pay if the car was as represented. If they agreed, I flew out with the money and drove the car back.

When I was around 20, My wife and I saved up the money to buy our first new car off the lot. Much of it was a reenlistment bonus...as my wife was not working and had just landed a job.) The car was a new Triumph TR8. I had convinced the wife it was just what we needed. We drove down to buy it. When we arrived, a salesman came out, sized us up, and sneered at my nice, mostly restored '65 Mustang parked on the street on the far side of the lot (I had been driving it for many years and put a lot of work into it). He told me he hoped I was not planning to trade that piece of junk in. I was not planning on trading as it would have become our second car, but I was pretty annoyed at him insulting my "classic."

Then he tried to direct us away from the car we were planning to buy...to some lesser cars because "we could not afford the nice cars on that side of the lot." That was it. We got into our "piece of junk" and drove away. We kept the '65 Mustang and bought a new house that we still own (used the car money as a down payment). It is now a long paid-off rental. We never went back to that dealer.