While Julia hates the vehicle purchase process, I rather enjoy it.
First, I made a plan. I wanted a truck that was 2019 or newer and had less than 60,000 miles. If it worked within my budget, I wanted to upgrade from my existing towing capacity and payload capacity. I also wanted at least a six foot bed, so that I could camp in the back at some point with the purchase of a new or used topper.
I didn't have any particular manufacturer in mind. I considered and looked at the Nissan Titan, Toyota Tacoma and Tundra, Ford F150, Chevy Silverado, and Dodge Ram. I stopped at about a dozen dealerships and talked to salesmen until I had a real good idea about the used market and what my trade-in was realistically worth
I considered standard cab, king cab, and crew cab. I liked the standard cab for the long bed feature, but I would have needed to buy a topper almost immediately because Julia was not going to ride shotgun with Callie. The ideal would have been a king cab, but they just don't make as many of those anymore. Selection was very limited.
I found a 2020 Nissan Titan in my price range with low miles, but realized after laying down in the back of the bed that it was too short to sleep in.
I nearly bought a 2019 Toyota Tundra with 60k miles on it, but it had these huge butt-ugly red splash decals all over both sides of the rear half of the vehicle and also red splashes inside the cab.
That would not have passed the Julia test. The salesman didn't think the decals could be removed from the outside without damaging the paint but was going to look into it for me. It had a Leer topper included that I liked a lot.
In the end, I went with a 2020 Dodge Ram, Big Horn edition. It had 39k miles. I ended up getting 7k in trade for the Nissan and negotiated 5k off the asking price of the Dodge. My new-to-me truck has more features and technology than I necessarily was looking for, but I have a feeling that is just the wave of the future.
Closing the deal only required waking out of the dealership twice--once on the price of the Dodge and once on the price of the Nissan. The thing about negotiating the best price is that you have to be willing to walk away from the deal. The salesman and his manager tried to convince me that this was the truck of my dreams. I had to convince them that I was willing to drive the Nissan for 60k more miles if the transaction exceeded my budget. As in all good negotiations, neither of us was totally happy with the final result. But I could live with it.
When I got home, the Toyota salesman emailed that they could get the decals off without damaging the paint. The Tundra wasn't meant to be.
