This isn't really too funny, but I thought it was a decent story worth a laugh. True story.
I'm not going to mention make/model, dealership, etc. of the car that I took for a test drive today, but things were pretty bad.
At first I pulled into the dealership, the asking price was $3,950 which is about what everybody else was asking for the same car with about the same mileage, I just wanted to see what this particular car was like.
Upon parking next to the car at this dealership I had walked up to the car and took a quick look around it. Checked the tires, looked for underbody rust, and everything else. Here is where the messed up part is, as I take a look at the back bumper it is missing 4 dime sized pieces of paint in different areas of the bumper, upon closer inspection I see that the bumper is detached from it's far-left mount.
I walk inside inquire about the car, as we were walking towards it, the dealer tries to claim he never saw it before, yet he was the person who took pictures of the car(everything but the back), and posted it on the web. We step in the car, which still had a can of aerosol tire shine product and some vinyl cleaner and a towel in the back seat, so it seems nobody test drove it since it was cleaned up.
We hands me the keys and I drive it to the front, which was a bit difficult based on the fact that the engine was idling at 2000rpm even after 30 seconds of running, which with an unfamiliar vehicle's clutch made me a bit uneasy. We pull out of the lot and after a few minutes the revs are settled at 1000rpm and things seems to be nice, except for a good deal of rattling while stopped in neutral. Acceleration on the 50mph highway was pretty good, but once up to speed and in top gear after the speed limit went up 5 mph I laid my foot on the gas to find that the car had a misfire. I figured that it was temporary but it continued to misfire as it was being driven and the check engine light blinked because of it and I look over at the car dealer and you could tell he was trying to keep his cool but you could tell he knew what was going on and he wasn't happy. I told him we were going back and we turned around and at that point I hit the gas and the clutch slipped a bit at which point the dealer pretended to look out the window in an upwards at some imaginary birds or something. When we get back he says, "So what did you think?" I wasn't sure what to say so I said, "I'm not buying a car with collision damage, a chronic misfire, and a slipping clutch." Then he asks me if they fixed all of that if I would be interested, I expressed more of what I thought but once he realized I really wasn't going to buy the car he started asking questions about the presentation of the car and what things he could do to improve the sale of the car and would I have bought it if the problems that I mentioned weren't there.
I just thought this was interesting because usually people would normally take some touch-up paint to the bumper and reattach it, change the spark plugs since it's over 100,000 miles. I suppose there is nothing that can easily be done about the clutch, although it was only noticable by watching the tach and the dealer would have probably just said that the tires are slipping because of the road conditions.
Does anybody else have test drive stories where it seems everything went wrong?
I'm not going to mention make/model, dealership, etc. of the car that I took for a test drive today, but things were pretty bad.
At first I pulled into the dealership, the asking price was $3,950 which is about what everybody else was asking for the same car with about the same mileage, I just wanted to see what this particular car was like.
Upon parking next to the car at this dealership I had walked up to the car and took a quick look around it. Checked the tires, looked for underbody rust, and everything else. Here is where the messed up part is, as I take a look at the back bumper it is missing 4 dime sized pieces of paint in different areas of the bumper, upon closer inspection I see that the bumper is detached from it's far-left mount.
I walk inside inquire about the car, as we were walking towards it, the dealer tries to claim he never saw it before, yet he was the person who took pictures of the car(everything but the back), and posted it on the web. We step in the car, which still had a can of aerosol tire shine product and some vinyl cleaner and a towel in the back seat, so it seems nobody test drove it since it was cleaned up.
We hands me the keys and I drive it to the front, which was a bit difficult based on the fact that the engine was idling at 2000rpm even after 30 seconds of running, which with an unfamiliar vehicle's clutch made me a bit uneasy. We pull out of the lot and after a few minutes the revs are settled at 1000rpm and things seems to be nice, except for a good deal of rattling while stopped in neutral. Acceleration on the 50mph highway was pretty good, but once up to speed and in top gear after the speed limit went up 5 mph I laid my foot on the gas to find that the car had a misfire. I figured that it was temporary but it continued to misfire as it was being driven and the check engine light blinked because of it and I look over at the car dealer and you could tell he was trying to keep his cool but you could tell he knew what was going on and he wasn't happy. I told him we were going back and we turned around and at that point I hit the gas and the clutch slipped a bit at which point the dealer pretended to look out the window in an upwards at some imaginary birds or something. When we get back he says, "So what did you think?" I wasn't sure what to say so I said, "I'm not buying a car with collision damage, a chronic misfire, and a slipping clutch." Then he asks me if they fixed all of that if I would be interested, I expressed more of what I thought but once he realized I really wasn't going to buy the car he started asking questions about the presentation of the car and what things he could do to improve the sale of the car and would I have bought it if the problems that I mentioned weren't there.
I just thought this was interesting because usually people would normally take some touch-up paint to the bumper and reattach it, change the spark plugs since it's over 100,000 miles. I suppose there is nothing that can easily be done about the clutch, although it was only noticable by watching the tach and the dealer would have probably just said that the tires are slipping because of the road conditions.
Does anybody else have test drive stories where it seems everything went wrong?
