A use for Asperger’s Syndrome?

Having Asperger’s sucks. I’m not into the big “proud of who I am and won’t change” thing, and if there was a cure I’d take it in an instant. I’m tired of constantly embarrassing myself and not noticing until weeks or months later. However I may have found a use for it: torturing used car dealers.

As I wrote previously, I lost my car in an accident. This sucked. We’ve been using Zip Car to get around, and it’s pretty cool. However, winter is hovering, and we’ve been starting to think that having a car again would be nice. And warm.

My previous car purchases were sleek, black sporty things. But I do so little driving myself (because of the headaches) these days, and my spouse is completely uninterested in the finer points of cars. They’re just a way to get around. With that in mind, I hit the internet to shop for used Honda Civics.

Everything you’ve ever heard about buying used cars is true. I have some edge in that while I’ve only bought one other car myself, I’ve watched my dad torture dealers before, which is pretty easy for him since he knows more about cars than most dealers do.

Our criteria made things a little harder. We don’t care about much, but we wanted a car that had never been smoked in, ABS, and a manual transmission. It turns out that all Civics after 2000 have ABS. While I’ve had some trouble getting private sellers on Craig’s List to answer questions about smoking, it turns out that dealers these days only have unstinky cars on the lots and send ones with smoke smells straight to auction because they are too hard to sell. Manual transmissions, on the other hand, are awfully hard to find.

After a couple of weeks of fruitless questioning of car sellers, I found a likely prospect on cars.com. It is a white four-door, 2001, with a standard transmission. It also had a rare clean one-owner Carfax report. I made an appointment with the dealer, and we rented a Zip Car to go look at it.

It was a perfectly reasonable car, except that it smelled. Not of smoke, but of mildew. What probably happened is that it was steam cleaned but not allowed to dry out properly. This was pretty darned lame. However, it wasn’t a deal breaker, because smells can be cleaned up.

I had a Buddha-like lack of attachment to buying this car. It was the first one I looked at. I wouldn’t mind not having to look more, but I didn’t care either way. This is a good attitude to have when looking to buy something expensive. The dealer, on the other hand, didn’t want to let me out of the place without extracting a deposit. More fool them.

The car had been listed on the web at $7700. This is just about the blue book price (something easy to check on the web). Word from the dealer is that they’d originally listed it at $9900, to which I can only say I want what they are smoking. The car had been traded in two months ago and sat on the lot ever since because no one wanted a manual. The hapless car guy asked me what price would make me sign an agreement to buy the car that day. I’d been doing some thinking, so I told them $6900.

Now we get to the part where I unleash the full powers of Aspergers on the unsuspecting manager. I have to work hard to get along with people in the best of circumstances, and I do not care one bit whether or not the manager of a car dealership likes me or not. Thus when he said things like “You’ve got to meet me half-way here!” I answered with things like “Why?” The manager tried asking me if I’d seen any other cars at that price, with full confidence that I hadn’t, and that the logic of it would force me to relent on price. In fact, I hadn’t seen any other Civics at that price, but I didn’t see that as a reason to agree with him when I’d only looked at one car. My spouse thinks that this was the funniest part. It doesn’t sound funny as I write it, but that’s because you can’t see the manager’s face. Since nothing he said to me accomplished anything, he finally caved. I signed an agreement with some big, fat contingencies on it.

One of them was that we get the car checked by our own mechanic. The dealership tried to talk me out of doing this because “Your mechanic isn’t a certified Honda mechanic, and ours is!” Right. It turns out that their certified mechanics has overlooked belts, hoses and a thermostat overdue for replacement, a leaking axle boot, and a pressing need for a coolant flush. By then the guy we were working with looked like he was going to cry. I got them to agree to do all the needed work. They’ve been dragging their feet on it a bit, but we expect to have the whole thing wrapped up by Friday.

Assuming nothing happens to derail the sale, my next big decision is whether to apply a Darwin fish or a Flying Spaghetti Monster emblem to the car’s rear.