Hyundai City

This is a somewhat belated review, as the 2009 Sonata we purchased from Hyundai City was back in June 2008, but as we are in the process of purchasing a second car, it has us reflecting on the shopping experiences we had in June 2008. The people we dealt with were pleasant and helpful and patient with us. The most notable part of the dealings was that we had actually had a horrible sales experience at Freehold Hyundai. A little history... the car was going to be primarily my wife's. She wasn't familiar with what was on the market, and I was going to go around with her to try out different cars to see what she liked best. We'd first driven a Subaru Imprezza, then went to Freehold Hyundai and drove a Sonata and an Elantra. My wife loved the Sonata, but not the dealership (see that review elsewhere), and so we test drove a bunch of other cars (Ford Fusion, Honda Civic, Kia Optima, Mazda6, VW Jetta, etc). But as she test drove the other cars, she found she kept comparing them to the Sonata. So we decided we needed to travel a little further afield to see if there was a Hyundai dealer that we'd like. Well, Hyundai City's salesperson was not at all high-pressure, but seemed genuinely interested in giving us all the information we needed (even a print-out of their offer to take with us.) We were up-front and told them what cars we'd looked at, and which one's we still wanted to look at (at that point we hadn't tested the Optima nor the Mazda6). And you know what they did? The salesman introduced us to one of the managers, mentioned what we'd looked at, and were going to look at, and the manager acknowledged that the Optima and Mazda6 were both nice cars, but he'd believed that we'd find the Sonata and its price hard to beat. And THEN they both suggested that we should get going if we were going to test those other two cars before the dealerships closed! They knew we had both taken the day off from work to car shop, and were actually ensuring we had the time to see and test all the cars we wanted to see. This blew our minds, in a good way. Well, we tested the other cars, and though very nice, the Sonata remained the favorite, and so we went back to the dealership late the next day to select a color and unit. But our nice salesman wasn't there. So we were going to just look at the cars in the lot and come back the next day. Well, a salesman named Charlie from the neighboring Dodge City saw us noting the differences between the units on the lot, and came over and helped us, and even took us out for a final test drive in the unit my wife liked to make sure about her decision. Then Charlie went into the Hyundai City and helped get us set up with the manager and the pricing so that we could take care of everything that night. We wanted to make sure that our first and primary salesperson was going to get credit for the sale, but also hoped that Charlie (though officially a Dodge salesman) also was compensated. They were going to take care of all that. Basically, it all seemed more like a team effort than a competitive effort. Plus they improved the price a little further for us to seal the deal that night. And again, their willingness to print information out and let us leave with us, and NOT keep insisting on seeing what it would take to get us to close a deal our first time in the dealership made them stand out from many of the dealerships we had dealt with. For the record, the remainder of the sales process with the financing guy and the paperwork all went smoothly, and everyone seemed to be working like a well-oiled machine. I read the other review in which the shopper was trying to do something somewhat non-standard with his car financing, and am sorry to hear that it didn't go smoothly for him. But certainly for us, doing a routine new car purchase, everything could have not gone more smoothly, including getting our plates in a timely fashion. It was very re-assuring.