I had been looking at trucks for the last couple months, mostly 1-3 year old trucks and I couldn't really find anything I liked. I started looking at new two wheel drive base models, mostly Silverados, I wanted something similar to my old truck only in a extended cab. I quickly found out there was no such thing, its either standard, club or crew cabs. Having owned a standard for 23 years I wanted something bigger and the club cabs are ugly and pointless unless you have kids under 10. That put me into crew cabs and the non-existent world of base two wheel drive. I could get something along those lines if I had them bring one in or drove south 750 miles, neither of which would put me in a position to shop around or bargain.
Yesterday we were on a GMC lot and came across a SLT at a good price. I had narrowed my search to GMCs because as a 4wd I liked the front end, wheels and wheel well molding better than the Silverado. This truck met and exceeded all my requirements but one which was the color. Black wasn't a deal breaker but it also wasn't my first choice.
I took a picture of the green tag, one of the window sticker and another of the vin#. The dealer we were at had a lot of trucks but this one was the only close to what I was looking for. One thing I noticed that while it was a brand new truck it had a decal on the bottom of the tailgate for a different dealership about 25 miles away, so we headed there next.
When we pulled onto the lot of the other dealer this is the first truck we saw, it was actually parked away from all the others along with a beautiful Denali HD with a diesel and an almost 70k window sticker.
This one checked all the boxes in a manner that I didn't even look at any of the other trucks they had on the lot. We took it on a short test drive and went in the office to start my favorite part of buying a car, the liars club otherwise known as negotiation. This one went fairly quick though, I showed them the pictures I had taken of the other truck and told them they could either sell me theirs for that price or I would just drive back and buy the other truck. That led them to explain to me that the price was fake and they wouldn't be able to match it, so I called their bluff and 2 hours later they were within $300.00 of the other truck. I settled on that because this one actually had more options than the other truck.
Today we drove the Cheyenne to a friends house who has two large pole barns one of which is empty, I am not at a point yet that I will willingly sell it, I would like to still tear it down and restore it. I have a lot of history with the truck and being 23 years old it just turned over 130k miles. My current garage is just not the right place to do it, so I'll bide my time on that for now.
