Then there was a slew of posts saying she should be sure to take a man with her when she went to buy a new car.
Sadly, this is statistically likely to make a difference. My personal experience is that women are treated like idiots at the car yard. Sad but still true.
A good friend of ours went down to buy a car. She looked at several with the salesman and decided to buy one. The salesman told her to come back with her husband to close the deal. This was in North Carolina. She, being originally from California, let the salesman have both barrels. She bought the car without her husband being there.
If she really wanted to make a point she should have bought a car from a different dealer after telling the salesman's manager why he lost the sale... As a side note, it's usually better to go with another person when buying a car to help keep yourself from making impulsive decisions.
LOL, I've promised my wife that I will never take her with me to buy another car. I did it once, and she took the bait of "This car already has a buyer at another dealership at full-price, we are just getting ready to ship it, but we can sell it to you for the full price instead." But that was fine, the price was already good, which is why we went to the dealership in the first place, it just gave me no negotiating leverage because she was scared to death of "losing" it. Then she got all worked up when the guy who comes in to sell the extended warranties gave his stupid spiel and she made me get it. I was so pissed by the time we got out of there, I could hardly breathe. She is gullible and impulsive as hell when it comes to big purchases like houses/cars, she doesn't understand the value of being willing to walk away, and she absolutely cannot stick to a predetermined game plan. Luckily, she agrees with me on all of these points, and she has told me that she never wants to shop for another car because she knows she'll makes bad decisions under stress (and dealers do their damnedest to make you feel stressed).
That's a total bummer.
First new car we bought (old one died) was a Toyota Matrix. We didn't actually PLAN on buying a car that day, but did a little research before going. We were in a town about 35 miles from home.
After test driving and shopping, we left for lunch. They promised to buy our lunch if we came back. On the lunch break, we found a computer (no smart phones back then) at a Circuit City and went on to consumer reports and got a report on what the car should cost.
We went back. Round and round of what they were offering, and we said "too high". "Well, let me try again." And he came back with a HIGHER number.
Anyway, at 4 pm (we'd been there since 8 or 9 am, with our 4 month old baby), I said "well, I'm sorry, but I don't want to waste your time anymore. I'm not willing to pay more than X amount. I'm tired, my baby is tired, and we've been here all day. Bye."
Um, we got the car at that price.