Is Sterling, VA near any of you DC peeps>
 

Hi All,

There is a REALLY nice e450 wagon at AutoNation Honda, down in Sterling VA that I am actively shopping. I'll know by end of today if I have a deal in place on it. I was wondering if anyone was very close to that area and if so has nothing better to do today or tomorrow and would like to put eyes on it for me.

If there is someone that is close and has free time, I'll let you know before you head over that it is something in the 90% complete range or if it is a dead end.

Thanks as always.

I was just out there on my bike yesterday—it’s not super close but I might be able to get out there this afternoon or evening for a quick look.

Thanks Josh

Here's the link. I'm waiting to hear back from the sales guy. If it works out, I'll send you a PM in case you would be able to check it out.

FYI, the option list made this a $90k build when new...
I have not seen that Designo spec interior on any other car to date.

https://www.autonation.com/ebrochure...06244&hid=2837

It's a bit too far for me to work in today or tomorrow.

Looks nice!

So your no longer looking for a beater? :cool:

TIL that Mercedes sells cars with scent dispensers in them.

First, Josh, thanks again for checking it out for me. I wouldn't have gone forward without someone getting eyes on it. I'm glad you enjoyed the massaging seats and the fragrance dispenser...

(Did you actually try the fragrance dispenser, and if so what did it smell like?)

Truth be told, I would check that option box if I was buying new, not for the fragrance dispenser but for the full ionic and charcoal HEPA filter that comes with it - allergy free environment.

i put a deposit it on it. I won't believe that it actually went through until I have the keys on Wednesday. The sales guy is a complete PITA. But I wound up dealing with his manager and got pretty much what I wanted.

This came out of nowhere. I had mentioned in a couple of other threads that we were going to be replacing the x5 sometime in the next year. We had considered a new x3 after the LCI, but my wife really prefers wagons to SUVs. The e wagon is a nice package. I really lusted over an e63, but couldn't justify the outrageousness of them. I had been doing a lot of research to understand the s213 (2017 on e wagons) and had been scouring sales ads mostly just to get an idea of what was out there, what the prices were etc.

I found this one and liked it. I had not seen that interior (Black "Designo - a $4900 option) on any other cars I had looked at but really liked it. When I dove into the options and saw it had well over $20k in all sorts of fun boxes checked, the price seemed really good. I ran it by my wife and she was more excited about it than most of my stupid car search ideas, so I worked with the dealership on a trade # and tried to keep the options low key. They realized their mistake in the pricing mid way through the day and I thought they weren't going to honor the listed price. Luckily I had one email in writing to push back with and it all sort of fell together.

We'll pick it up Wednesday (if nothing goes south with the dealership in the mean time).

and yea, sometime between now and the end of the year we'll probably grab a beater.

You must have nabbed it? Link no longer works...

good luck!

Wasn’t it priced at like $45k or something in the site earlier today? It’s now at $63k.

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-...=myATCsavedcar

It was listed at $60,990 this morning.

It was 60,990 on the sticker when I drove it.

This is the first modern E class I’ve driven. It is really quite nice; not sport tuned but comfortable and quick and with decent handling. It reminds me of the E61, though with the air suspension you can select firmer and better damping.

The massage seats seem like an excellent road trip idea, and the active bolsters are kind of ridiculous but also kind of nice.

It’s a gorgeous color, too.

I’m not super in the market for a car like this, but it’s pretty hard to imagine a better road trip car. And I cannot for the life of me understand how someone buys a GLE over one of these.

Nice find! And happy to help. It was a nice day for a blast out to Sterling in the convertible.

Apologies for the Stuka-esque pics; was trying to grab some details.

Note the mood scent in the glovebox. I didn’t try that, mostly bc I didn’t have time to figure out how (and after checking to make sure the car didn’t smell
Funny I was wearing a mask anyway).

If forgotten that they went and ruined so now you have to buy the E63. I wonder if the new version actually sells at all?

Are you talking about the 2021 "All Trac" or whatever, the jacked up version is now. I'm surprised they went that route, the pre-facelift verstion was just about perfect.

Yeah. Gross.

Beautiful, Josh, congrats!

Nice! Congrats!

Awesome - really nice spec, congrats!

We crossed out posts. Score, Josh! The scent thing is weird, but, whatever! Wagons rule, as we all know. Plus, I think your wife is something special—you obviously found your soulmate.

Jeez maybe I should have bought it:

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews...n-reliability/

No kidding. Looks amazing. And with such a recent model year and such low mileage, a real long-term keeper.

Enjoy!

I am going to offer this excellent tiktok as a reason to consider going with the E63: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeD2kag4/

I had my wife read that article last week. It helped move the process along more quickly than it otherwise would have.

On the phone I mentioned the white / brown version of that designo interior and worrying about it being gaudy. That car has the interior I was referring to.

And BTW, if you want *that* car... its for sale:
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/invent...ting=286275882

Ha ha yes that interior is...a lot.

No kidding. I'd expect that combo on a Rolls convertible.

congrats. Nice looking blue:cool:

Congrats! Perfect road trip car for sure. Not going to lie - I kinda want massaging seats! Also hard to find an class wagon with leather instead of mbtex


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This is true.

BTW, on massaging seats, my son accidentally hit a dash button and exclaimed, “What’s that?!”

He had hit his seat ventilation button on my luxury Mazda. :lol:

I’ve had a zillion BMWs, but this is the first car I’ve had with seat ventilation...may come in handy in ATL summers.

EDIT: Ex’s Boxster has it, but that was not my fun mobile. The 2 is rather spartan in its appurtenances. Fancy options were withheld from buyers—no HUD, no seat ventilation, no lane change warning, no adaptive cruise, etc...The Mazda has it all.

Man, dealing with a "high volume" dealership is a monumental pain in the ass. I'm stil 70/30 on actually coming home tomorrow with it. I have already had to deal with 6 different people and it took me until literally 20 minutes ago to get an actual agreed on cash in hand amount I need to bring tomorrow. This is after we had a sale price and trade value agreed on Monday. After we agreed on the everything, came the we charge a...
wait for it...
$799 dealer processing fee
and
$200 out of state processing fee.

F**************CK YOU!!!!

But the car is a diamond, and it is under priced by a lot, and it makes my wife very excited so I'm going to eat it. I did pull my offer to finance through them and am just bringing cash. F these people they are the worst. If I was in a normal car shopping situation where I had a few options to bounce off each other, I'd totally walk from these POS people, but I'm going to suck it up and hopefully close everything tomorrow.

The massage seats will have a lot of pent up stress to work out on the ride home ;)

Ugh, that sucks. The dealer processing fee is stupid, and VA's stupid high fee is one of the reasons I actually buy a lot of my cars in MD...but yeah, here you don't have a lot of choice.

And the $200 out of state processing fee also blows, but if they legitimately are going to handle all of the title work that's not cost-free and I can see the logic behind charging it.

Which isn't to say these guys aren't sleazy, because they totally are. Hope everything goes smoothly tomorrow.

What are you trading in, the X5?

Yep. I am fine w/ the $200 fee. The $799 is really shit. They advertise " no haggle, transparent pricing BS" then when all is agreed on sent the paperwork with the $799 bomb dropped on us.

We are trading in the X5. 2013 with 158k miles. It's been a very good vehicle for us. We never fell in love with it, but we definitely appreciated how well it served us. We bought it in 2017 for $25,999 w/ 48k. We got our money's worth from it.

:lol:

The Camaro is my first car with ventilated seats. It's an odd sensation. Especially when the fans turn on automatically and unexpectedly. Like happened for me for me the first time on Saturday.

I was just thinking, my last car purchases have been:
Ohio - Porsche
NJ - X5
MD - 135
NY - E61 535
NC - E36 M3
NY - E39 M5

The only cars I've bought in my home state over the last 15 years, were the two MDX cars and the e46 wagon. I almost forgot I also had the e90 335 in there from PA too. and I took over the loan on the F30 335GT from Pittsburgh, so basically, forget about my originaly point that my cars have come from out of state.

The max allowable fee in VA is $895 and almost every dealer charges it. So, congrats on saving a few bucks?

JST, I'm sure you're aware that MD raised how much dealers can charge for processing from $300 to $500 last summer and the price of every dealer-sold car the state went up $200 overnight.

This fee has always drove me insane. I don't mind giving dealers a fair profit, but it should be built into the price of the car. I almost walked over the fee when buying the RX-8. The way we had negotiated, they kept using $X+Tax and "Fees" and my counters were all $Y+TTL. The "we have a deal" number was mine. When they tried to add the fee, I said "No, that wasn't the deal." They said they have to charge it because if they don't, they could get sued by someone that did pay it. I said we agreed to a price without the fee. This is the amount of money that will come out of my pocket. If you lower your price for the car by $300, I'll pay the $300 fee. If not, thank you for your time." And they lowered the price of the car by $300.

The other thing that infuriates me these days are dealers removing freight/destination in advertising/negotiations and then re-adding it back after an agreed price. Not the case here since it's a used car, but that makes me go ballistic.

The $200 charge for doing out of region title work, though, is...fair, IMO since it's outside their normal process that they does cost them extra. And probably not much less than they charge you for it.

Yes, agreed to all of that. It’s almost but not quite as infuriating as having to fight with BMW dealers back in the day for a set of floor mats.

Really makes me appreciate Tesla’s process. I hate haggling...

Well I got it and it is now home in our driveway. It's super nice, but I'll leave my impressions for a different thread with some pics, and info.

Up until 10:30 last night it was touch and go. Today wasn't nearly as painful, but we were still at the dealership for 2 & 1/2 hrs waiting for "paperwork to print". I didn't get a final bill of sale type of quote with everything tallied until 6:30pm last night, so we took our best guess on a cashiers check just before the bank closed and decided to make up the difference w/ cash or a personal check.

Once we got the final quote, I replied with a very detailed outline of what I was planning on bringing and what I was expecting. At 9:00pm the "Director" replied to my email and said I'd need additional documentation to trade in the X5. This led to a heated phone call with me repeatedly explaining that all the info in the email had been shared multiple times w/ multiple employees of his over the last two days and everyone up until then said it was fine. His response was "this is the first I'm hearing about it". 45 minutes of arguing led to an agreement that we'll keep the car sales separate - he will sell me the wagon, I'll sell him the x5 when I get the doc that was missing later this week. Had to split the $450 lost sales tax savings from processing a trade. These guys sucked sooo much. I would have walked away 15 times from this deal if the car wasn't a serious rarity at a great price.

The ride home was much more pleasant than the 3hr ride down there on RT95 (with the torrential rain, and 3hrs of sleep because of all the stress), but the nasty weather didn't let me explore too much of it.

Really cool aside, they left the contact info of the old owner in the car. I just linked in to him and we're going to chat at 5:30 to catch up on the build, etc. Should be interesting.

Wow, great to hear it worked out, but sorry that the process was so sleazy. And that sucks about the X5 and the lack of accountability and responsibility on the part of the "Director."

Hilarious that they left the contact info for the prior owner inside, though. What a bunch of idiots.

And, um, I'm glad you liked the car! I would have felt bad if you didn't. :eeps: