Went EVO shopping yesterday....
Evolved Member
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 806
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From: Irvine, Ca
Funny I had the same thing happen to me and I went in a Range Rover. Not that the car mattered, just funny we had the same situation. Huntington Beach told me they only allow people to drive the used ones. So I took the used one for a drive for the fun of it, wasted about half hour of the sales persons time and went to Anaheim and bought it. They let me drive the new one I bought.
So i've been kicking around the idea of getting a EVO. My buddy just bought a STI and I am going to get a EVO to prove a point to him. It would be a 4rd car for me that I would Mod to make it a fun track/weekend toy. I pull up to the dealer in my Range Rover and sales person comes out asking if they could help. I told them I was interested in the EVO MR. The sales person takes me in the back they have a bunch of MR's and GSR's. I find a MR that I like that has the options I was looking for. He asks if I was interested and if he should go get the keys to open it up? I told him yes i'd like to open it up and go for a test drive. The sales guy looks at me a says he can open it but we can not go on a test drive with out running my credit. At first I thought he was kidding, I told him i'm a all cash buyer and I dont want my credit ran. He said sorry but with out running my credit I could not test drive the car.
I was pretty taken back by this. He then explained that this was standard policy that ALL dealers do this. That if they let people test drive them than the cars would have to many miles on them. I'm 34 years old, I have owned exotic cars in the past and not even when I went to purchase one of those did they want to run my credit to test drive a 250k+ car!
I'm not a dick by all means but this just rubbed me the wrong way. After telling them how I felt about their policy I walked away. I am a impulse buyer and if I liked the car I would have bought it.
Did everyone here have to have their credit checked to buy their EVO?
I was pretty taken back by this. He then explained that this was standard policy that ALL dealers do this. That if they let people test drive them than the cars would have to many miles on them. I'm 34 years old, I have owned exotic cars in the past and not even when I went to purchase one of those did they want to run my credit to test drive a 250k+ car!
I'm not a dick by all means but this just rubbed me the wrong way. After telling them how I felt about their policy I walked away. I am a impulse buyer and if I liked the car I would have bought it.
Did everyone here have to have their credit checked to buy their EVO?
Evolving Member
Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 444
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From: Minnesota
I sell cars at a mitsubishi dealer. We deliberately don't do this for exactly the reason you're writing about! We don't credit check people, we don't make people set appointments. You want to drive one, you can. The only "requirement" is that my general manager comes and talks with you for like 5 minutes (he also owns and Evo). That's a BS policy.
Evolved Member
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 806
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From: Irvine, Ca
Some do it some don't care. My dealership made me do the credit app and all that before I could test drive. Its a dealer to dealer thing. Some just want to have the protection and know that it is a serious buyer. But at the same time, if you would have shown them cash, I would have been surprised if they still said no. But it probably didn't look like you had $45K sitting in your pocket either.
But it's dealer choice just like we have the choice to buy someplace else.
Evolved Member
Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 1,350
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From: San Antonio, TX
I pulled up in an Evo 8 and they couldn't get me into the X to test drive it fast enough... I didn't even enter the building before they were out there with keys shoving me towards the car to test drive it.
Evolving Member
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 103
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From: Duvall, WA
I had a similar experience accept the first place I went to check out the X they wouldn't let me test driver regardless of credit check. The next day I went to a dealership 10 miles down the road bought a brand new X after they let me test drive no questions asked. I called the first dealership the next day and told them about their lost sale.
I'm going against the grain here and saying I'm glad lots of dealers don't allow test drives on new performance cars. I basically unwrapped my IX at South Coast, it had 2 miles on it.
I don't want a bunch of people ragging on my car before I buy it.
I don't want a bunch of people ragging on my car before I buy it.
Why does everyone care if they run your credit history? I understand if your credit is terrible. When I bought my lancer a few years back, they asked to run my credit and I didn't even have any credit lol. Now when I bought my X they still wanted to run it and I said fine because I have an account with freecreditreport.com and know what my scores are.
Newbie
Joined: Mar 2012
Posts: 2
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From: Earth
My thoughts exactly. What does everyone do when they test drive a car? Basically beat the nuts off it. How fast does it accelerate, how fast does it stop, how hard can you corner, etc. For most cars the hardest miles of it's life are the first 50 or so that it remains on the dealer lot. I'd pay extra to have a car that was never test driven.
In reply to the OP, I've never had a credit check to test drive a car. They usually just run your license and off you go. I'd probably object to that unless I was dead set on buying the car, in which case what difference does it make?
My thoughts exactly. What does everyone do when they test drive a car? Basically beat the nuts off it. How fast does it accelerate, how fast does it stop, how hard can you corner, etc. For most cars the hardest miles of it's life are the first 50 or so that it remains on the dealer lot. I'd pay extra to have a car that was never test driven.
In reply to the OP, I've never had a credit check to test drive a car. They usually just run your license and off you go. I'd probably object to that unless I was dead set on buying the car, in which case what difference does it make?
In reply to the OP, I've never had a credit check to test drive a car. They usually just run your license and off you go. I'd probably object to that unless I was dead set on buying the car, in which case what difference does it make?
Evolving Member
Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 444
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From: Minnesota
I work at a Mitsu dealer, and we only have an MR and a GSR. They're both in the showroom, and therefore can't be test-driven on a whim. We have found that when people buy an Evo, they want pretty much no miles on it. If we left one of our Evos on the lot for test drives, it would be beaten on and would have more miles on it than most people would want. Better still, the wheels would be stolen (happened at a dealership near us). If we have serious buyers, of course we would make the cars available to drive. The problem is, 95% of the people who come to test drive aren't as serious as you'd think. That leaves us with a pretty beat-on car for that 5% who actually want to buy it.
I agree with you that most people aren't going to qualify to buy one, but that doesn't mean we won't show them the respect of letting them drive the car if they're seriously interested in buying it. Yes, from time to time we turn people down because they really are just looking to joy ride, but they're pretty easy to root them out.
It isn't that most of the people who I test drive them with don't want to buy them, it's that they can't afford it. I can't even tell you in the 3 months I've been selling cars how many Evo sales I've lost in financing because they don't make enough money, have **** credit, or no credit at all. But we feel it would be pretty ****ty of us to turn them away from driving it or checking their credit first... you only get so many free ones a year.
Last edited by TrogdorWBL; Mar 22, 2012 at 04:23 PM.