I love when car dealerships reveal they are overpricing cars. Ask to drive some hot new car they are selling for $20k over asking price—they'll say "it's not available for test drives, our insurance disallows it" even if they sell other cars costing 2-3x at the same lot.
Why? If someone wrecked the car on a test drive, insurance would only give them the list price of the car (minus their fake 20k over). It's not worth dealer price to any insurance company since the dealer set the wild price.
@mathowie Hmmm. But if a particular car is really hot at the moment and demand is driving its market price above MSRP, why shouldn't the dealer hold out for that?
@mathowie Funny, that. When I went out shopping for my new-to-me car, I asked for a test drive the week before, and the salesman I talked to just photocopied my driver's license and gave me a paper permission slip, put a dealer tag on the back, handed me the key and told me to have fun.
Granted it was a used car, but that was a wild experience because I'd never before got to go on an unsupervised test drive. XD
Cuz that's quite normal in Germany: Dealerw will usually have some models to test drive and as part of their "mobility assistance" program where they'll offer a rental car at a low rate whilst one's own car is in the shop.
Even insurances offer the latter.
And also not being able to test-drive before buying is usually seen as a red flag - regardless if it's a new model or used car.
@kkarhan@mathowie The last time I went on a test drive was, I think, back in the late-2000s when my mom decided it was time to replace her Honda CR-V with something else.
She had me do the test drive because she believed I had a better sense of what kind of car she would like to have.
@dragonarchitect@mathowie Reminds me of some relative that did the same for one looking for a used car and OFC they went on the Highway and pushed it.
When coming back to the dealer they noted the "car turns slightly left" and the dealer was like "there's some rust on the brakes" and they immediately called them out for that bs saying "not anymore!"...
Since that kinda got all the wrong vibes they didn't bought any car from that dealership.
@mathowie I don't understand who buys a car without taking it for a test drive anyway.
I mean, unless you're fucking made of money.
Back when the big 3 were circling the drain in the aughts, a friend and I went to the local Ford dealer and tried to test drive something deeply unremarkable.
"You going to buy today”
“🤨 that's why we want to test drive. To see if we're interested.”
"If you're not going to buy it, you can't test it.”
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