Our purchase of a new BMW 328i from Larry Stenson at BMW of Austin was the most straight-forward, pleasant car buying experiences that we have ever had.
I put in an on-line "dealer quote" request from http://Edmonds.com, and within 30 minutes or so, Larry had emailed me a response and welcomed us to come by for a test drive - and he said that they had a few models in stock that matched our selection of colors and options. We initially test drove the 335i with the Sport Package, and we took it down the twisty, curvey Old Spicewood Springs Road to see how it handled and then up Loop 360 and back on Hwy 183 to see how it drove on the highway. It was VERY nice. We thanked Larry, and told him that we still needed to look at the other 3 cars on our shopping list - Acura TL, Lexus ES 350, and Infiniti G37 Journey.
The Acura seems large and cumbersome in comparison to the BMW, the Lexus was very dissapointing - the car floated above the road, with very little "connectedness". The Infiniti G37 Journey was very close, and we really liked the red color, but that only came with a black interior (we like in Austin, TX and it gets HOT in the summer). We were willing to "put up with" the black interior and sat down to start talking finances. The Infiniti dealer would offer us $10, 500 for the trade-in on our 2003 Infiniti G35 Coupe, which was $1500 to $2000 less than Edmonds claimed it was worth. We almost bought it, but decided to sleep on it.
That evening I sent Larry and email saying that we would like to test drive the less powerful 328i without the Sport Package, and mentioned that my wife was really leaning towards the red color (the Inifiniti looked great, and the BMW brochure that Larry gave us showed that the 3 series was available in red exterior, with TAN interior). Within minutes Larry emailed me back and said he has one in stock that matched that criteria and he would have it ready for us to test drive at 10 AM the next morning.
When we arrived at BMW of Austin the next morning, a light rain was falli
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