Car Dealerships and 2012 Subaru Impreza First Drive Review

Today a friend and I went on what seems to be a bi-weekly test drive and dealerships in our surrounding area. Today, however, unlike most other trips, this one was enjoyable and probably the best test drive/dealer experience we have ever had. Our goal today was to test drive the 2012 Subaru Impreza 5-Door (trim line didn't really matter, the goal was more or less to get a feel of the feel of the car). So after what seemed like a three hour drive just to find the dealership we walked in and were introduce to a salesman. Very friendly, educated, smart, and he asked us what we were here for. My friend told him that we had seen the new Impreza at the Detroit Auto Show last month and were completely taken back by the reasonable price and good gas mileage. My friend then asked if we could take an Impreza 5-Door for a test drive, unfortunately the dealer had sold their last 5-Door and were waiting on moor but they did have a sedan that we could take. We agreed that it didn't matter all that much whether it was a 4 or 5 door and decided to take it for a spin. Much to my surprise he handed us the keys, without scanning either of our licences or even asking our names, and said "I'll see you two in a little bit!" So we were off.

The Subaru we drove was the standard Subaru Impreza 2.0i with the CVT Transmission.





You throw the shifter to the left while in drive to switch to the Paddle Shifters which you can see peaking over the steering wheel in the picture below.



We drove it in a good variety of environment; city driving (stop and go), highway, and rural. The rural road we found was quite well hidden with a speed limit of 30 (ha ha, yeah right like anyone goes that slow) and a lot of bends it was a great place to test the handling. It looked something like this...



Divided by 20 and not in the mountains and that's basically it! In short the Subaru Impreza is a phenomenal car, it drives super smooth you almost can't even feel the bumps in the road. The steering is extremely responsive and quick. The cabin at 85mph was extremely quite, while I didn't try it I would assume a quite whisper would still be easily audible at that speed. Overall Grade: A

Upon our return to the dealer he asked us how we liked it and we told him all of our good thoughts on the car, there wasn't a negative one to give that I could find. And he began telling us all about the car, differentials, AWD system, accessories, roof rails, etc. He was not at all pushy, just very educated, very respectful about our needs and wants. So Dion if you are out there and you happen to read this, my hat goes off to you, the best car salesman I have ever had the fortune to speak with. \

Going off of that note, I have noticed a trend when it comes to dealerships. (Mind you, this isn't coming from someone who has only been to two dealers, I pride myself on making dealership trips a fun event and I have been to many; Ford, Chevy, GMC, Buick, Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Cadillac, Hummer, Audi, Porsche, VW, MINI, Land Rover, Pontiac, Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, etc.) The trend is that most foreign dealerships, their employees tend to treat the customers 20x better than the domestic dealers. I can think of half a dozen occasions where I have left a dealership unhappy, or worse, unattended! Whereas the foreign dealers, there has been only one time where I have left unhappy and that was solely because they were so busy. I am not sure what it is but for some reason foreign dealers have better customer service. Enough said.