Wombat Mobile I should be coding or sleeping instead of this...

There's a new Wombatmobile (rhymes w/ Batmobile) in our household. I've been busy car shopping with my fiance over the weekend. She ended up getting a silver 2005 Honda Accord LX coupe. It's funny, I used to laugh at some of the strange houses on my street with unimaginative car choices (one house has 3 corollas of similar years but different colors. Another house had two almost identical white mustangs, but they moved away. Another house has a bunch of cars up and down the Honda lineup, but all the same year, so their driveway looks like a dealership. But now we've added another Accord to my green 2001 Accord EX sedan, and we'll probably be known as the "Accord House".

It's interesting how the car buying experience has changed around here from when I bought my car in late 2000.

Back then I went to the web sites of 8 or so car dealers in the Bay Area and checked their online inventories for my desired trim line and color. Then I got immediate quotes on the site and printed out the best ones after doing a quick check of independent sites with dealer costs and typical prices to make sure I wasn't getting too ripped off. Finally I went down the dealer that had my car in stock with the best price and bought it.

This must have been less profitable for dealers as it was much tougher this time around. None of the sites showed inventories nor gave instant quotes via the browser. We could have used an online source like carsdirect.com, but their website was pretty vague and not very intuitive. Most of the dealer sites had changed from immediate online quotes to "request am 'instant quote' and we will call or email you". Then when you talk to them over the phone, they'll say that they have every possible combination you're interested in to get you to come down there in person, but after you get there, they can't seem to find them on the lot.

It still wasn't as bad an experience as accompanying my dad to buy a car as a kid, but it's interesting how, from a consumer's point of view, there's been backwards progress on the car-buying process.