O.K., so we looked around at the local dealers today, trying to find a nice used, near luxury sedan to replace the satanmobile. First we hit Mercedes Benz (I know, but you gotta dream sometimes) and the sales guy was probably the best I've ever experienced. Low key, talked about his baby and cooed over ours, real classy and understated pitch, I told my DW later I didn't even feel the knife go in as he worked us over to the cars. He actually got us away from the C classes, looking at a used E class with 30k on it for exactly $30,000 (who does that? Aren't all prices mandated to end in "999"?). We chatted a bit further and left feeling pretty good. Went to the infiniti dealer next, this guy was good, but a little more obviously slick, silk shirt, gold bracelet and fossil watch etc. They had some used G35's for 25-30k, still a little much for what we want to spend, he kept it brief and we moved on. So now we are getting excited that if we keep looking we'll find the one we want.
We go to the Acura dealer and head over to the used lot. A painfully thin kid comes out, had to be his first week. Clothes to big, no undershirt under white dress shirt, missed several spots shaving etc. Had some TLs there for ~23k, and they had a C320 Mercedes for 22k with only 30k miles on it. But it had orange interior - that must knock the blue book down on it a grand alone. So we went to walk away, and he starts in with "used cars are like fingerprints, you're never going to find this exact car again!" I mumble, "thank God -I mean, THANK YOU!"
We're done. We've lost the taste for spending money. There was a day we would have had the E class in the driveway right now. We are hitting Lexus this afternoon, then were going to wait until the end of the year and try again.
....maybe we'll just get a Hyundai.