The Battle Of The Small Cars - The Outcome.

As I mentioned in a recent post, Lovely Leslie (aka @lesliedupreez) my long suffering SO and I had decided it was time to replace my awesome but aging VZ Holden Ute with something a bit more modern.

After a great deal of research and test drives we finally made a decision to purchase a VW Polo. These things are a bit like rocking horse shit, they're in short supply. The nearest dealer, Kinghorn VW, claimed they had located one for us. Trouble was it was in Queensland.

I mentioned to the salesman that I wasn't overly comfortable with having a vehicle bought down from Queensland given the situation at the time ... namely the Queensland Floods. No matter how often I voiced my concerns they always assured me it was a done deal, there was no problems getting the vehicle etc etc.

My feelings were somewhat different. What car dealer in his right mind would get rid of a new car to another dealer on the south coast of NSW when half the people of south-east Queensland had lost their cars in the floods! I mean, do you have to be a rocket scientist to work this out! On top of that I thought that with highways being cut and transport at a premium it would be a considerable time for delivery, even if the dealer was happy to pass the vehicle on.

I signed the contract, paid the deposit and sat back to await this great moment.

Next day I get a sheepish phone call from the salesman saying they weren't able to deliver. He felt that the dealer in Queensland might have sold it and hadn't let on.

No doubt, this guy is a frigging Einstein. D'oh! I want to shout "I told you so!" but what was the point.

I must admit they refunded the deposit promptly.

One funny thing. This particular salesman was terrible at follow up all through the process. As soon as the sale fell through he phoned my maybe 3 or 4 times to see how we were going and what was happening. Too late Charlie Brown!

That very day we dragged our sorry arses back up to Nowra and bought the little Mazda 2 Genki from Nowra Mazda and the awesome Wayne Schlick.

Would you believe, just after placing the order we received a call from a VW dealer in Canberra to say they had a Polo in stock in the colour we wanted.

Needless to say, my dear SO was pissed off. She wanted the Polo. Meanwhile I was quite happy with the little Genki.

We picked the bright green Kermit up late last week and have been very happy with him since. I drove him to Canberra last weekend, he went really well, but as you would expect a little 1.5 litre engine does have its limits climbing the mountains between the coast and Canberra.

I won't be making a habit of taking Kermit away from his coastal lair, the Subaru Outback that we own will do the Canberra run very nicely.

So, at the end of the day ... the only thing I can say is Kinghorn Motors, Bzzzzttt, you are now officially on my Shit List.