If you’ve read my blog entries over the years, you know I can often be a little wordy with the background before I get to my point. I believe context is important and want to fully inform my readers.
However, sometimes it is best to cut to the chase. So…
Yep, I am now the proud lessee of a 2021 Audi Q5.
It’s pretty fucking sweet.
We picked it up Thursday, so it is still early days. I’m pretty sure I’m totally in love with it. I’ve also been listening to Zooropa a lot.[1]
For today’s entry I suppose I need to explain how I went from looking to lease a new car in July to actually driving one on May 13.
While my plan was to ride out the final months of our Tahoe lease, in the back of my mind I was hoping that, at some point in the process, a dealer would make me an offer to end that lease early. The Acura sales dude made some noise about that after I drove the RDX. But since I didn’t love that car, I didn’t press the issue.
As we chatted after my Q5 test drive, the Audi salesman said there were options for getting me out of my lease. For the next couple days we went back and forth via phone, text, and email to clarify some questions and lock in a few details. Once I identified the exact car I wanted, I told him we were ready to move forward if he could deliver on helping with the Chevy lease.
Long story short, my sales guy was formerly employed by the Chevy dealership I leased it from. Although Audi did not want to take the Tahoe as a trade in, he worked his old buddies to get them aligned with our interests. His efforts included tracking down his closest friend at the Chevy dealership on a beach in Florida to kick off the process, making multiple calls to find the right guy to deal with here in Indy, then clearing the path so I could show up at the Chevy dealership and walk out with an agreement for them to buy me out of the lease.
I was kind of shocked at how easy it was. Chevy wiped out our last two payments while Audi was giving us credit for one of those payments toward the Q5 price. Chevy wasn’t making me replace the tires, which were on their last legs. Or fix the scrapes and dings and scratches on the body. Or make the car go through the normal post-lease inspection process. That saved us a lot of money, and helped to make up for the extra dough we’ll be paying Audi since they don’t subsidize their leases as much as Chevy does.
I’m don’t know if the Chevy dealership was willing to work with us because they owed my salesman a huge favor, because their inventory of both new and used cars is so lean at the moment, or just because the patron saint of auto leases was looking out for us. Whatever the explanation, everything sure lined up exactly right over the past week.
Regardless of how it came to be, my life as a Tahoe owner is over and I am now zipping around in a fine German automobile.
And so my search for a new car ends a couple months earlier than expected. This series isn’t over yet, though! I figure I owe you one or two posts on life as an Audi owner. Be looking for those soon.
Vorsprung durch technik. ↩