Yes, that’s David’s new car, a Ford Escape Hybrid. We just drove it home from Woodfield Ford, and frankly, we’re in shock. In a good way. Because we got a good deal and we didn’t have to wait weeks and weeks and weeks for delivery, like some new hybrid owners.

First off, what’s a hybrid? It’s a partly gas-powered, partly battery powered car. There’s different kinds of technology involved; this particular vehicle has what’s called a “first generation” power plant. The Ford site explains how it works

We weren’t planning on driving the demo car off the lot, but that’s what happened. We drove the same vehicle last weekend, and it was the last of a batch of 4 or 5 that the dealership had gotten in – the other cars sold quickly, this one did not for some reason. It had been on their lot for maybe a month.

We thought we’d be checking availability of a car in a different color, with a different set of options (there were several kind of expensive options on this car that we didn’t want). In the end, we negotiated a pretty fair deal – slightly under MSRP, in spite of the team leader guy (who took over negotiations for his relatively inexperienced salesman) saying that there was normally a steep “marketing surcharge.” Supposedly this “marketing surcharge” was $5000, which he’d gotten from his last customer. Um, we didn’t quite believe that. We stuck to our guns, and when it came down to a difference of just $100, David said “It’s the principle.” That’s when I piped in with, “well, again, we had a different color in mind, with only the options we wanted, and not with the ones we don’t care about. We could always start fresh and have you check availability for what we’re looking for, and get an idea of how long the wait would be. We’re in no hurry to take delivery.” I actually had to chime in with that twice, because the negotiations went about 3 rounds. I think they were expecting me to take the “Honey, it’s only a hundred bucks” route.

Man, it was good when the manager guy caved. They really wanted to sell that car, they really wanted to make the first sale of the day, they really wanted to ring the little ship’s bell. And we got all these cool options that we “didn’t really want” without having to pay for them. Heh. Plus we got the option we did want after all, which is a 6-CD changer/nav system/energy output display.

I get to drive the RAV4, which I now rechristen “Ravi Gincar.” The Corolla 5-speed is being sold to someone for their daughter – she’ll have fun driving it. So it’s all good. We financed just by increasing our home equity line of credit, so David wrote a check for the full purchase price on the HE account, and so the interest is tax-deductible. There’s still a $2,000 tax credit this year for hybrids.

So yeah, it’s a win all around, except maybe for the car dealership, though who knows what their actual dealer cost is. They probably still made out okay, just not at highway robbery levels. Actually, except for a certain amount of grumpiness that we weren’t going for any of the after-deal stuff like “Protector” sealant or financing, they dealt pretty fairly with us. Ask for Anton or Don at Woodfield… they’ll probably try to pull the “marketing surcharge” thing, but might be more willing to deal if they have a vehicle on the lot that’s been there more than a week. We estimated from the mileage that our Escape had been test-driven by at least 10 other people.

There are buyer incentives for the regular Escape but not for the Hybrid, so if you’re looking for a gas/electric car, be prepared to stick to your guns and make it clear you’re willing to wait for what you want IF you’re actually okay with whatever vehicle they have on the lot.

That’s a lot of looky-lous.