A short history of our buying vehicles- we bought our Saturn new on RD's b-day about 9 years ago, then we traded that in for our Venture van four years ago just two days after RD's b-day! So we thought we would continue the tradition only do it on TEM's b-day! Happy birthday TEM! We got ourselves a new van. We went to the Toyota dealership on Thursday. We acually went "just to window shop". The only van that fit our criteria was a new trade in that they were still doing normal maintenance on, so we were not able to drive it. So we came home last night and did some research on the internet. We found the blue book value of the 2005 Honda Odessy with 39,000 miles at the dealership to be $23,900, just what the dealer said they were asking for. All the comments from other Honda owners were very positive. Then we looked up our 2003 Chevy Venture for the trade in value. It was listed to be between $4200-$5600. We found the comments to be most interesting. Many people that have or had a Venture from 2001-2003 were very dissatisfied. Their main reasons were the repairs they had to make including the head gasket, manifold, electrical and transmission problems! All of these things we are currently having trouble with or see it in the future. So we came to the conclusion that we should buy a new van and soon while we could still get a decent trade in. We went back to the dealership today with a specific price ($15,000, Ha HA) and monthly car payment we wanted. We totally did not think we would get it. It took us a little over 5 hours to get $5000 knocked of the price and for them to give us $4477 for our trade in! This took the price to $14400! We did opt to buy an extended warrenty because this van is loaded with electrical toys, and we had to put our sales tax into the loan so that brought the loan up to $17,000. We said "no" to their offers at least 5 times and we were actually in our old van leaving the parking lot to go home when the dealer ran out to us and said they would give us what we wanted! But all in all we think we got a pretty good deal.
The milage was a little more than I like to buy on a vehicle,but it has electric everything, a sun roof, DVD player, 6 disc CD player, navigation system that talks to us, a back up camera, dual sliding side doors, climate control AC, and leather seats with warmers. It has air bags all over the place, stow-in-go seats (fold up to be level with the floor), and an optional 8th seat. I would never had bought this vehicle if I did not get the price we got. We are actually paying about $2000 less for this van than we did for our Venture! I can only pray that this van lives up to the Honda reputation! I'm really not excited about having a car payment again but I know I won't be paying for major repairs for at least 60,000 miles!
