The Car

Note: I just reread this post to discover it was teaming with typos,eep! I have corrected them. My fingers are often too fast for my brain it seems. So we went test-driving on Saturday. Our aim was to drive the three vehicles I mentioned previously, however we only made it to two. The Honda and Mazda dealerships in Arlington are very close to each other so it was easy to knock those two out. We went to the Honda dealership first. I apologize there are no photos but it was like 20 degrees outside so we didn't linger outside too terribly much. (Side note: To the couple who purchased the CR-V off the showroom floor while we were there and subsequently locked it while we were in the midst of taking a glance at it, congrats on your new car and please grow up.) Overall we were extremely pleased with the CR-V as I was expecting. It has a lot of really thoughtful design features and add that to the spacious open layout of the interior and decent gas mileage for an SUV and we were hooked. It rode very smoothly and was quite comfortable.

We headed over to the Mazda dealership next to drive the CX-7. The sales person there was very sales driven and a bit more pushy than our first stop which kind of put me off a little to begin with. Then we quickly realized that he wasn't up on all the various trim levels and options available. Worst was that we told him we wanted to drive the smallest engine yet he put us in one with a turbocharger anyway. Yikes! The inside of it was just not as well-laid out as the Honda and not nearly as open. We didn't like it nearly as much and he should have taken that hint when we were still hesitating at his offer of their last 2010 for a significant discount.

After that experience we were hungry and headed home. The closest Subaru dealership is south of us, outside the Beltway (shudder). We try to only go down that way for Magic Skillets, Swedish home furnishings and home improvement supplies. We decided to take some good looks at photos online of the Forester only to discover it also didn't have the nice open interior layout that the CR-V had so we didn't even go. Then we discussed our options... colors, trim, FWD, AWD, etc. and we decided what we want:

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This would be the CR-V EX-L in Urban Titanium Metalic with a black leather interior and front-wheel-drive. After checking their online inventory we came to the decision that we might end up with this instead if they offer an incentive for buying what they have available:

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This would be the same vehicle in Alabaster Silver Metallic, also with black leather interior. We're now just working out the options for trading in/selling both of our existing cars and getting our hands on this one. We want to get the best deal so I suspect we will see what both the Honda dealer and Carmax will offer us and see which is higher. The price he quoted us in the showroom for this model was less than online listed MSRPs and that made me very happy. I'll keep you posted on our progress!

Other images from here and here