kamehamaha

have the dealership lease or buy ONE s2k.

break it in properly and let that and only that car be the test drive car. they would do the upkeep on it and charge the driver like a $40 "upkeep reimbursment fee" which is non- returnable even if a deal is made. license and insurance info will be verified to be correct and you are on your way.

this way anyone that wants to test drive can see what the car can really do, without damaging it.

anyone that buys the demo, will have a car that is not abused.

what do you guys think? I know alot of you would still buy the car w/o driving it but if this policy were in effect upon release date, would you agree to the terms?

jschmidt

No. Virtually no one damages this car on a spirited test drive. Well, perhaps the ones that 360 into a ditch. The break in thing is way overplayed on this board.

BillK

Cool - that means when the salesperson VTECs that new car with 10 miles on the odometer it won't do any damage, right?

In my experience it's not the test drivers that beat on a new car, it's the salespeople, anxious to "show what the car can do."

scottrnelson

I would have to agree on that.

A couple of weeks ago I test drove a 2003 Nissan Maxima SE. The salesman had to drive it out of the lot and he was flooring it and revving the engine when it had only been running about 20 seconds. You shouldn't do that to a car that is fully broken in, let alone to a new one.

Tigger

What would be the incentive for a dealer to go through this extra cost and administrative hassle especially when they don't seem to have any problems with S2000's staying on the lot even if they have been test driven?

Kalcium

It never seizes to amaze me how much we dwell on this issue. Is break-in important to a vehicle OWNER? Yes. Are the people trying to sell the car incentivized to care for the vehicle as much as an owner who is into it by as much as $36K+? Not really.

One of my clear motto's in life is to always examine people's motivitations and figure out how such motiviations make them behave. In this case, one could argue that over the short term, the dealership and sales people are not incentivized to ensure a proper break-in period, especially in light of the fact that this is a highly non-measureable thing, unlike say the reading on the odometer. i.e. How would you know that whether the car was broken-in properly or not?

All I know is if a customer walks up to the showroom and asks to test drive a car he/she are interested in and I ask them to fork up a $40 refundable charge (only if they buy the car), 9 out of 10 people (myself included) would walk out with a bad feeling about that whole store.

Nice thought. Not practical though. -KM.

Kalcium

Ignore my previous long post. Tigger summed up the issue better. -KM.