Anne and I took our first step towards buying a new Prius, on Thursday. Actually, we’ve been internet shopping for a couple of days now; this was just our first foray out into the real world of car salesmen and all that. After work, we went to the dealership where we had purchased our last car from. It seemed a logical place to start, except that they didn’t have any Prius cars in stock, at least not new ones. They had a few “previously owned” ones, but even with 32K+ miles on them, they were asking more for it than the list price on a new one.

The salesman that we spoke to did have a line on a new Prius and it would be available in just a few days, but it wasn’t there yet. The Prius comes in a number of trim packages; these packages can raise the base price, by up to $6K. Needless to say, this was one of the more expensive versions of the Prius. To make matters worse, many of the features that differentiate this version of the Prius from its cheaper cousins were not on it. There was an earthquake don’t you know, and a tsunami too, and if you don’t want it, someone else will. I’d almost forgotten how much I hate car shopping.

I had hauled Anne out to this dealership to look at a Prius, so I asked to see one of the used ones, since that was all that was available. This particular dealership is spread out across all four corners of a busy intersection. The poor salesman had to dash across rush hour traffic to retrieve the Prius from the used car lot. It I had known beforehand that this was required, I would have foregone the request, but at least I got a photograph of Anne sitting in a new (to us) Prius. Friday, the hunt will continue. I’ll check out a dealer near work, but I suspect that we have already seen the lay of the land. We just have not had enough time to accept the reality of it all yet.