Car-buying trip yields surprise for Fresno Bee columnist and his octogenarian dad
Dad needed a new car. The registration on his 1999 Volkswagen, approaching 200,000 miles with nearly as many dings and dents, was expiring soon and wouldn’t pass a smog check without thousands in repairs.
Even my 81-year-old father, who doesn’t like to get rid of anything that may have some life left, couldn’t see the logic in that.
There were other forces at play, as well. After recently driving my dad’s car, my sister became convinced it wasn’t safe. (“Marek, he’s going to get himself killed!” she exclaimed over the phone.) Dad vehemently disagreed, and it became a point of contention between them.
So for the sake of family harmony, and possibly my father’s well-being, something had to be done. The problem, of course, was the pandemic. Which made him reluctant to leave the house for any task, particularly one as onerous as shopping for a new car. On top of that, nine months before COVID-19 struck, mobility issues suddenly left my once-active father stuck home and isolated. (He has been a widower since my mom passed in 2005.)
“It’s like you’ve been through two pandemics, back to back,” I told him during one of our regular Skype calls.
Dad understood he needed a new car. He read Consumer Reports and narrowed the choices to two SUV hatchbacks that would make it easy for him to transport his beloved orchids: a Subaru Forester and Mazda CX-5. But he also needed a nudge to get out of the house and help with the car-buying process.
That nudge and help became me. Just as soon as my two Pfizer vaccine shots kicked in, the two of us (both wearing masks) spent a recent Monday at a dealership in Burlingame, with Subarus and Mazdas in neighboring lots, about 30 minutes from his house in Los Altos.
We were immediately greeted by a young salesman named Julian, who showed us a few different Subaru Forester models while we sat in the front seat. Dad spent four decades working in Silicon Valley — optical storage was his area of expertise — so fortunately he’s not as intimidated or bewildered by the latest technology as many his age.
The previous evening, we went through all the options he wanted as well as the ones he didn’t (i.e. no leather seats). It became my job to ensure the cars we looked at fit those specifications and translate the dialogue between my octogenarian father and Julian, who is in his early 20s.
We spent several hours looking, walking between the Subaru and Mazda lots and test driving four cars (thankfully Dad remains a competent driver) before he settled on a silver Forester with a moon roof and the blind-spot detection system he wanted. All that remained was haggling over the price — something I was anxious about because of the new-car shortage as reflected by the $9,000 dealer markup on the car he wanted.
I’ve purchased two new cars in my life and never paid MSRP. Neither had my father, who had a set number in mind thanks to Consumer Reports. But to our astonishment, the manager wanted $4,000 above MSRP and wouldn’t budge.
Things started getting tense at that point, and it appeared like my car-buying mission would become fruitless. That’s when I gingerly floated the idea of a lease.
‘In three years you can just trade it in’
Leasing a car, at least in my dad’s thinking, has always been verboten. You purchase a car, you make the payments and provide the maintenance, and it’s yours for keeps. Driving around something that technically isn’t yours doesn’t fit that mindset.
This time, though, his reaction surprised me. Maybe in those few seconds between my suggestion and his response his mind worked out that it didn’t make a ton of sense to purchase a car that would probably outlast him.
Of course, I didn’t say those words aloud. All I said was, “Leasing will cost you a lot less money now, and in three years you can just trade it in for a new one.”
With that, following seven hours at the dealership, the lease deal got done.
Great drive home
Since my dad and I drove separately, the only remaining hurdle was how to get both of our cars and the new Subaru back to his house without making a return trip. Julian came to the rescue by volunteering to drive the old Volkswagen to Los Altos, then taking Lyft back. Which was very nice of him.
Dad had a great time driving his new car home and testing out all the gadgets. When Julian arrived in the Volkswagen, I thanked him and gave him cash to cover his rideshare.
That’s when Julian took me aside and told me the driver’s side floor mat in my dad’s car was impinging on the accelerator pedal and he had to pull over and fix the problem.
“It was super unsafe to drive,” Julian said.
Yikes. When I visit my dad for Father’s Day, I’ll be super happy to see that new car in his garage.
This story was originally published June 18, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
