The new Odyssey

I have been largely silent for the past month. It doesn't help if we take turns falling sick. Our boy first got chicken pox, wife got it a week later and then I got it two days after that. It's kind of surprising that kids and adults get chicken pox in the UK. It is common in India and rare in US. Wife and I both got chicken pox as kids in India, but still we got it here - maybe a different kind of virus here. Anyways, we are all fine now.

I briefly mentioned in one of my posts before that I will be taking up a new job in February. I found a job in Reading. At 17 miles drive from home, which should be much better than the 1.5 hour one way commute to London I was doing before. My initial plan was to take public transportation for the first month or so, see how it goes and maybe then get a car. The public transportation option turned out to be a bad idea - I had a 10 minute walk to the train station, take a 24 minute train to Reading, then take a 15-20 minute bus to the business park where my office is located. My commute ended up being at least one hour each way, which is not terrible by UK standards, but worse than I had anticipated. At £180 a month for the train season ticket and bus pass, this was not cheap either. Getting a car was the highest priority.

Then we had to decide what car to get. Initially I was thinking that we would get a small four door car (superminis as they are called here). Having a Ford car already and being happy with it, I had settled on a new Ford Fiesta (a bit smaller than Corolla in the US), which has got great reviews. But then wife came up with the argument that the family car - Ford Fusion - is already five years old and will need to be replaced in 2-3 years time since it is too old for a family car. So why not buy a bigger family car now and I drive the Fusion we have? This way we can get away with buying just one car. That sounded like a good idea and we started researching for a big car, which would have a third row and seat seven people if required. We then embarked on looking first-hand at our various options.

Car dealerships must be the most customer-unfriendly business in the UK. They close at 6 on a weekday. Saturdays are better, but are open practically only for a few hours on Sundays. Plus, they don't seem to be interested in selling cars, since they don't show any interest in the customer.

• We first called a Vauxhall dealer to see a Vauxhall Zafira who asked us to come down immediately. After going there, we were asked whether we have an appointment. Since we did not have one, we were asked to come back later for a test drive. After some talking, we were reluctantly shown a car which I took for a drive. The Zafira was cheap, but the reliability ratings were bad, so we moved on.
• We took a look at a Volkswagen Touran. The salesman had a showroom model only and asked us to come back later to test drive another car. He did not show much enthusiasm and the Touran seemed to more expensive than others, so we moved on.
• Peugeot 5008 was another option. The salesman was really nice and we drove an almost new car, which we liked. But Citroen's Grand C4 Picasso, our last candidate, was very much like this and was little cheaper with better financing options, so we moved on.
• Citroen Grand C4 Picasso was our last option. Initially, we could not find a dealer nearby who had a car for test drive. One of them asked to come after few days and when I went, I was given a three year old car to drive, which was not very pleasant. Another dealership, which was 40 miles away, said he had what we are looking for. He asked us to come down so that he can give us a really good deal. When we went there, he had no clue what we wanted, did not even have a showroom model, and gave a really old car to test drive. This topped everything else! On top of it, he was so rude and did not even looked like he was sorry. We finally found some other dealer in the same group, test drove a car and thought we liked it.

I called around a few Citroen dealers to get a price quote and they all ended up being about the same. We decided to buy from the dealer who showed us the car, paid a deposit and waited for a couple of weeks for the delivery.

I find it hard to not compare our car buying experience in US. When we bought our Odyssey minivan there, I got an email quote through Edmunds.com from all the dealers around. With this we got a fair idea of the prices and called the biggest dealer nearby who gave us a quote which was $1200 cheaper than the next best. Without even setting a foot out, we knew where we were going to buy. We went to the dealership lot, picked out a colour from there and got the car in less than a week. US dealers are supposed to be aggressive, but our experience was different. UK dealers seem to be exactly the opposite.

Wife has been driving the new car. With narrow streets and tiny parking spots, it is not exactly a great experience, but the car itself is great. Somehow wife handles it better than I do with regards to parking. It is smaller than the Odyssey we had, but seems as good.