[Kurt_W]

I must admit that I'm surprised you didn't check on the insurance cost prior to walking into the dealership. Insurance was the first thing I checked prior to purchasing my 04 WRX a couple weeks ago. I however don't know how convenient it is for you to contact your provider…mine is local so all I had to do was walk into the office and make an inquiry. I am also surprised that your dealer would even let you take the car off the lot without proof of insurance on the car. My dealer wanted to see that I had a policy set up and prepared for the car when I showed up to get it. (I will note however that my dad thought that the dealer wanting the policy set up already was kind of odd.) The difference in terms of insurance policy might have been due to your leasing the car versus my purchasing the car…

As for the dealer, it all depends. I walked into my dealer (Louis Thomas Subaru in Parkersburg, WV) knowing what I wanted and I knew that Thomas didn’t have it. I told him that I knew where I could get what I wanted and he could either get it for me or I would purchase it at the dealer (John Howard Subaru in Morgantown, WV) that had the car. Thomas Subaru was willing to get the car for me and the next day I drove one of Thomas Subaru’s 03 Foresters (which made for a nice 120 mile test drive of the Forester, which is a nice car btw) to the Howard Subaru to pick up my car and return it to Thomas Subaru. I did this so that I would know who had driven all the miles since it came off the truck (it had 6 on it when I picked it up at John Howard Subaru.) I delivered the car to Thomas Subaru where they when over it and cleaned it up so I could pick it up the next day. My 04 was the first 04 that Thomas Subaru had sold, and probably one of the easiest sales he had had in a long time. I knew which car I wanted, where to find it, about how much to pay for it (which I was happily surprised to find out that he charged me about $2000 less then I had prepared to spend), and I even saved him the trouble of retrieving it by doing it myself.

It should be noted that I had heard many tales of the troubles people had when dealing with Thomas Subaru and I was very happy when I had absolutely none at all. If I’m ever in the market for another Subaru and I’m in this area, I’m sure I will talk to them first. It should also be noted that their used cars salesman and service manager are pretty amusing to talk to most of the time too. I don’t think that them knowing I had a SVX as well hurt either, in fact most of the employees I talked to there thought it was pretty cool to have one of each. Also, the salesman I talked to at John Howard Subaru in Morgantown was cool too, wanted to know if I did any autocrossing and that kind of stuff.