The IT Nerd

Our latest problem with our Toyota Matrix in regards to excessive oil consumption has been a real pain and it’s also been incredibly stressful for my wife and I. It led us to begin the process of looking for a new vehicle to replace it and we had deleted the Lexus NX200t from our list of contenders and added the Acura RDX, followed by my craptastic experience at a local Acura dealership when I went to see the RDX. Since then we got the results of the oil consumption test that Toyota wanted us to run. Which was that the Matrix consumed oil, but it was not bad enough by Toyota’s standards to be fixed on Toyota’s dime which didn’t exactly go over well in our household. Thus we started to look at all the contenders on the list at dealerships which included taking test drives as well as evaluate the dealerships. Let me tell you, that was not fun. The fact is that the car buying experience sucks. Lots of pressure. Lots of stress. Not nearly enough ability to make an informed decision. I should also mention that during all of this, my wife and I were literally bombarded by phone calls from any Toyota dealership that we had been to. For the record, there have been five in total that we’ve either gotten service done at, or we’ve bought parts from. What was interesting was that they were calling us to get us out of the Matrix and into pretty much anything else in the Toyota, Scion, or Lexus lineup. If that wasn’t enough, they all specifically mentioned that they’d give us “top dollar” for our Toyota Matrix. The fact that all of them started calling us after our oil consumption results came back has to be a coincidence. After all, this was happening at the time of year where dealerships are clearing out their inventory. So, that combined with the fact that my wife and I had a seven year old car which makes us a good target for a new one is a plausible reason why we were seeing this influx of calls. Though the conspiracy theorist in me does make me think of more nefarious reasons behind these phone calls.

All that changed when I got the opportunity to review the new Hyundai Tucson via Greg Carrasco of Hyundai Of Oakville who’ve I’ve not only interviewed twice, but I’ve been on his radio show several times. During my discussion with him, I discussed the problems with the Toyota Matrix and getting Toyota Canada to properly address it. I also asked him if I was overacting to the situation. He basically was dead honest with me and told me I wasn’t as well as going into a great deal of depth about what what wrong with the situation, and what my options were to deal with it. I really appreciated his honesty and it allowed my wife and I to pull the trigger on immediately dumping the Toyota Matrix.

Now, why the Hyundai Tucson? In short, we were impressed by it in a multitude of areas when we had it to do our review (As my wife is a big influence on what I write. Thus every review is a team effort). It was refined, luxurious, powerful and well built and had all the options that we wanted at a price that was good value for money. Plus there were three factors that really tipped the scales towards Hyundai. First, there was no, as in zero mention in the user manual that oil consumption was “normal.” That alone was worth the price of admission given our recent experiences. But the more important reason was the JD Power And Associates had Hyundai at #4 in initial quality this past June. Finally, it’s backed by a five year warranty. You don’t put a warranty of that length on the table if you don’t feel that your product is good. And JD Power thinks it’s good. So with all of that, we were willing to take the leap of faith on a Hyundai Tucson 1.6 Limited which we picked up this past Saturday. We’ve only had it for a couple of days, but we believe that we’ve made the right choice. It’s already been on a long drive to the remains of the World War II era spy school known as “Camp-X” just east of Toronto. That allowed us to become used to the vehicle and discover a few extra things about it that were not covered in the review that is currently online. Thus I’ll have an update to the review of the Tucson later this week.

At this time, my wife and I would like to thank a few people at Hyundai for making this very, very painless. First up is Greg Carrasco who I have to applaud his honesty as well as working very hard to facilitate everything and to get the best trade in value for out ailing Toyota Matrix as well as get us the best sale price for the Tucson possible. Second, Tanya Ventura gets our thanks because she made the paper work and all the setting up of the financing easy. Finally, Abdul Ghafoor gets a shout out as he worked hard to get us the vehicle we wanted and to make sure that we were ready to go this past Saturday when we went to pick it up. All of these people combined to make purchasing this vehicle easy and painless and they are examples of how car dealers should sell cars. Every other car dealer should take notes.

Now it’s time to enjoy our new vehicle and breathe a sigh a relief because our nightmare with the Toyota Matrix and the lack of will by Toyota Canada to properly address our oil consumption issues is over.