recently i've been on a major capitalist venture (well, for me, anyway). i have been out shopping for my first car. after all, i can only drive my parents' cars for so long, & i need transportation to my new job proofreading for macmillan (which starts next week). so in these last days of freedom my father & i have been patrolling the dealerships in search of the ultimate starter vehicle.

this has not been as easy as some might imagine. since it's essential that my car be vaguely reliable, we narrowed our search only to the major dealerships in order to avoid the miniscule, corner lot, check-out-my-new-tooth-wax smooth operators who work out of the no-name lots. & since it was also necessary for the car to be relatively affordable (i have to be able to make the payments with an entry-level job), our choices were chiseled to almost nothingness.

many of the name-brand dealerships try not to lower themselves to selling any cars below $10,000, as though they'd be slumming if they did. & most of the few cars that are available for half that either have 100million miles on them or are sticks. & who wants to be stuck behind a stick? i've never even tried to drive a manual transmission.

however, if you think that avoiding the cheapo nobody dealers ensured some kind of trustworthiness among the salesmen, then you need to snap out of la-la-land. it doesn't work like that. you can trust the average felon more than a car salesman.

one place we went seemed almost to have a monopoly on shadiness. the entire discount lot was essentially price-tag free. the price listing on the stickers merely said "ask salesman". but where were the salesmen? we were there at least 40 minutes & never were we approached by anyone.

after that place, i thought everyone else would seem saintly in comparison. i kept thinking so for about a half an hour until, at another dealership, we heard 2 different price quotes for the same car within 5 minutes of each other -- and the prices differed by over $1000.

by the end of our major shopping day, i was so jaded regarding used cars that i almost didn't want one any more. but what could i do? a man has to get to work.

in the end we decided on a '90 maroon galant, bought used from the saturn dealership. we filled out the first paperwork mere hours ago, & i should have the car within a few days. ahh... refreshment. i must admit many of the "we're saturn & everyone loves us more than their own mothers" advertisements that've been shown are pretty annoying, but you can't blame them. they're marketing a truly innovative way of selling cars: honestly.

no, this is not a thinly(or even thickly)-veiled plug for saturn. hell, i didn't buy a saturn. but the saturn dealership was the only place where i didn't feel like we were going to be scammed. what's scary is that that's a huge compliment for an american car dealer.