> Rabid brand loyalty serves absolutely no purpose other than to
> appease the marketing gods of the auto industry. There's nothing
> a marketeer likes better than rabid fans spitting on other marques
> for no particular reason, other than to fight with the other rabid
> fans.
Very true
> I always hated and despised Chrysler and their shitty products,
> including the much-vaunted late 60s muscle cars. Mainly because
> the stuff Chrysler produced through the 70s to mid 80s was pretty
> much dreck.
I can't help you there, I wasn't born yet!, but my favorite resored old
cars are the late 60's camaro's.
> Then I finally decided to buy a new truck and did my
> research...
> Chrysler seems to be the only manufacturer with it's shit together.
Damn Straight! Hell, I didn't even want a truck! For me, my car broke
down and I needed a reliable car right away. So I looked at a base 1997
chevrolet camaro (And I mean base, there weren't ANY options). The tag
was about $16500. The best that chevy could do with my trade in (1990
chevrolet beretta GTZ apraised at $2000) was a 3yr/36,000 mile lease with
payments being $350 a month. Just for the heck of it, I asked about a
base yukon/tahoe [and yes, I knew they'd be more] the guy said over $550
a month! As much of a GM fan as I am, that's just outrageous!
I checked out Nissan and they had a special lease program for $239
a month + 2000 down on a 1997 Maxima GXE. I was ready to get it, until I
drove it. It swayed really bad, not too much feel in the steering wheel,
and the acceleration with the automatic was not that great.
So, I went to Dodge. My grandpa has a chrysler discount so that
could help, but it turned out that the cheapest way was not to use it. I
spent a long time in their and I had a really great salesman. I basically
told him that I needed to get a ride for under $250 a month and that I
didn't really have much experiance with dodge. So he patiently let me
test drive a neon, a stratus, a v-6 dakota, and my v-8 dakota. This guy
really had some patience, because I would come back from a test drive, had
him the keys and say naah, that's not what I want, and he immediately put
me in a different car. But the most amazing things were the lease rates,
the neons were about $124 /mo the stratuses were about $199/mo the v-6
dakota was $260/mo and the v-8 dakota was $277/mo. He worked with me and
we eliminated some of the goodies that the v-8 dakota had (First of all it
was priced for a SLT with power everything, and I ended up with a Sport
(Which I wanted more anyway), and manual mirrors, door locks, and windows.
I still had a/c, a power sunroof, a cd-player, tilt, and cruise.) He was
able to drop the price to $251.54 a month and with my trade in(only
apraised at 1200) he took car of all of the up-front costs, including the
first month's payment. Now that's what I call striving for buisness.
> I make no claims for '97 since I haven't seen
> the price tags,
Mine was about $19,800
Well, sorry this is so long,
Jeff Misner
a well satisfied '97 dakota sport CC, automatic, 3.55, 5.2 v-8 owner
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:07:37 EDT