When Car Shopping: Test Drives - And not wasting your entire day

GF recently purchased a new car and have recently gone through the regular dealership hassles, fortunately she quickly decided exactly what she wanted and liked. Some encouragement from her has me thinking that I should start looking for something new as well.

So here is the big question: Is it possible to test drive a few cars (or single car) without getting stuck at the dealer for an inordinate amount of time with a salesperson making their pitch? I understand its their job, I just have no desire to spend significant time with them leading up to the drive and afterwards especially if I had found a deal breaker. It honestly seemed like at most we maxed out at 2-3 dealers a day, considering the actual drive was only a few minutes it just seems painful. A relatively quick streets/highway loop will highlight any vehicles handling/powertrain/ergonomic deal breakers.

The only solutions I can think of is trying a friends or family members car, or a short term rental, though these are limited to what is available.

I've had good luck with just going in and being straight up: "I'm test driving right now. If you carry the model that i end up deciding i want, we'll talk prices THEN, and not one moment before. I AM considering other makes/models that your dealership does not have, and i will not make any decisions until i drive those as well."

Maybe add something in like "I'll appreciate and remember how you accomodate this request." (Less formal, probably. Don't want to sound like a robot.)

Average test drive for me is less than an hour in and out.

Swank Force One wrote: I've had good luck with just going in and being straight up: "I'm test driving right now. If you carry the model that i end up deciding i want, we'll talk prices THEN, and not one moment before. I AM considering other makes/models that your dealership does not have, and i will not make any decisions until i drive those as well." Maybe add something in like "I'll appreciate and remember how you accomodate this request." (Less formal, probably. Don't want to sound like a robot.) Average test drive for me is less than an hour in and out.

This is an excellent tactic. And if you live anywhere like me avoid the dealers that just flat out refuse test drives.

Test drive at carmax. About the only pressure they put on you is trying to justify why their cars are overpriced by several thousand dollars. But you could potentially test drive several cars one after another without too much of your time being wasted.

I test drove a specific car I was looking at that they had, determined it was something I could live with daily, then shopped elsewhere within my budget. I was in and out of carmax in an hour.

+1 What they said about Carmax or a similar type place in your area.

I agree with SFOne. Tell them you are just test driving and are in a hurry. That is what we did when the wife was looking for a new car. We went and parked at the edge of the lot and wandered around looking at what they had on the lot. When we found one that looked interesting we told a salesman we wanted to test drive that one. Did the test drive, took the salesman's card, said "Thank You", and left. At one dealership the salesman wanted to ask a bunch of questions first : Were we trading something in?, etc. We just turned around and left!

Agree with SF1 and also Carmax. I've had good luck with going on a weekday when things are slow and telling the salesperson I'm just starting my "investigation phase". Tell them your an engineer so you will be doing a lot of research and it will probably be a couple of months before you make a purchase decision but you have to start somewhere. I drove a Chevy Sonic LS 1.4T and Scion FR-S recently at the OEM dealerships and it was pretty painless. Not at all like the BS I remember from the past, but I'm not exactly a 20 something anymore...

I have just been pretty honest with the dealers and said that I need to test drive the car and I'll let them know after the test drive if we need to talk more. I also go in with a pre-approval notice from my credit union so they know I'm serious.

The last 3 cars I drove I never even made it back inside the dealer as I knew I wasn't going to buy the car and there was nothing else that I was interested in. Funny thing is that the only dealer that let me take the car out solo was the Porsche dealer. The Ford and Nissan dealers both gave me a yappy sales guy as a ride along.

Carmax is good if you want to see multiple makes at the same time.

I don't know, when we were shopping for the Concert Coach a couple weekends ago, we hit 6 different dealers in a Saturday afternoon, and test drove at least a couple cars. We were pretty straightforward with the salespeople, and we didn't have to waste a lot of time. Just be friendly, honest, and firm. Tell them what you're looking for, the a price range you're willing to pay, and go from there. The only one we spent any really significant time talking to was for a car we almost bought. And when they couldn't quite come down to what we were willing to come up to, we shook hands and walked out. We even got a hand-written note from the salesman thanking us for being his best customers all day, even though he didn't sell us a car.

If you're straightforward with the salespeople, it's not such a fight. They don't want to waste their own time, even if they don't care about yours.

I just tell them that I'm interested in the car, it's on my short list, and I'm not ready to negotiate until I've decided on the car. I usually get in and out quickly. I've found that when I've called ahead about seeing a specific car, I'd get a solo test drive. I guess they figure they don't have to sell me on the car at that point.

A lot of it comes down to dealer, too. My local Mazda dealer loves to give out test drives, never comes along for the ride.

Toyota dealership? It's like pulling teeth and they always want to come with us. A little annoying when we're test driving MR2 Spyders, because SWMBO needs to spend a little time in the passenger seat to see if the car will make her sick or not, and there's no way i'm letting a salesman drive her around.

When we bought new this past Dec. I simply drove around the dealer's lot and found the car I wanted to drive prior to getting out of our car. We parked near it, by the time we were done reading the window sticker, and opening the doors, there was a salesman asking if he could assists us. I told him we wanted to drive the car, 5 min later he was back with keys, and he hopped in the back. When we were done with that test drive, we then told him the other model we wanted to drive, he walked us to its location, and promptly got us the keys for the one we picked out.

After test driving both cars, we met with the sales manager, I told him what was up, and that we weren't buying that day, he shot us some BS price on the car we were most interested in. I let them know we'd be in touch, thanked them for their time and left.

We test drove 2 cars, put about 8 miles on both of them, met with the sales manager, and left in approximately an hour.

We did wind up buying from them, about a week and a half after the test drive, bought the car we talked numbers with the sales manager about. However, I spoke with most of their competition withing 300 miles of us, and got competing offers, until they matched the best. Which was about $3200 less than the original BS price the sales manager gave me on the day of the test drive.

I've had way more success getting hassle-free test drives when I bring my girlfriend. Something about a relationship says, "why yes, I trust you behind the wheel, stranger."

Thanks for all the suggestions! It may be that I just get sucked into speaking to sales people. I like the strategy of the vehicle being on my short list and no decisions will be made until I've driven each.

Mitchell wrote: I've had way more success getting hassle-free test drives when I bring my girlfriend. Something about a relationship says, "why yes, I trust you behind the wheel, stranger."

Apparently, age and not looking like a complete douche while formulating complete sentences in English also works.

SWMBO generally won't go with me until I've narrowed it down to a particular vehicle (unless we're shopping for her car, but if she could do that vicariously through me she would never participate in a car purchase)...actually, she hasn't even been in the most recent fleet addition. I had to coerce a buddy to drive me to the dealership I purchased the FR-S from.

Another strategy you should use is that you schedule your day so you go to at least two dealerships back to back. Don't buy a car the first day you test drive them, even if that is the car. Make sure that you tell them this, especially if you're looking at some beigemobile so they can't charge you $300+ extra for not shopping around. I would also have an aggressive mindset of buying my car and not letting a salesperson sell me something.

I always find it helpful to call in advance

I'm hoping to do Euro delivery of a new M3. I'd been on a hot lap in one as a passenger at VIR but never driven nor closely inspected one.

I called the nearest dealer who has one in stock last Thursday & told him my situation & that I'm also gonna cross shop a couple of other cars before making decision. No problem, got the test drive etc. Friday morning & have had minimal "carsalemanlike" follow up since.

It depends a lot on the dealer in my experience. Toyota was terrible, Hyundai was ok, ford was reasonable, and fiat was actually very pleasant.