I recently bought an RX-8 from John Hine Mazda in San Diego. Here are my impressions, in case anyone is curious about them.

Their pricing was actually pretty nice. They offered me 27100 on a Manual with Sport Package including delivery ($1300 off sticker, $900 over invoice). I was pleasantly surprised to see such a fair price as their first offer.

During the financing, they didn't try to screw me with any extra options. No bogus dealer prep, processing fees, "paint protection packages" or anything. Just the car, tax, and licensing. Didn't throw a fuss or pressure me to get the extras like Lojack or anything. Financing took all of 10 minutes to get through. Very nice.

Their sales staff was pretty good about finding the car I wanted over the course of a few days and a lot of phone work. It showed up from Riverside in perfect condition, and exactly as I expected.

Now here's the one ugly thing. The sales manager repeatedly lied to me about their credit application. Coming in with my check already issued by my bank, I refused to fill out a credit application. They lied to me three times and tried to pass it off as a background check required under the Patriot Act, a necessity for the DMV to send me my plates, and a simple signed statement affirming my current address. I finally had to get a little irate with them to get them to back down. I did not appreciate being lied to like that, and I would have bailed were it not for the fair prices, and how particular I was about what packages I wanted on the car.

And that's that. Overall, it wasn't too bad with the exception of the blatant lying. Now, back to enjoying my new car.

 

This is a new one that's described at carbuyingtips.com. The guy who runs the website hasn't yet verified whether the Patriot Act really requires (or allows) a background check like the one they tried to talk you into. My understanding is that the Patriot Act has imposed a lot of requirements on financial and other institutions dealing with large flows of cash (including apparently car dealers), perhaps even the verification of someone's identity or the reporting of large purchases, but it seems like a naked attempt to get you to use dealer financing to include a "credit check" as part of the process. Especially if your lender will just wire the money to the dealer's bank account, why should they care? How will a computer printout from Experian or a free peek at your credit score tell anyone with certainty who you are? Anyway, it's good that you stuck to your guns, and if they did back down from running a check on you and they were in fact required by law to run it in order to consumate the sale, then they've broken the law--so what else is new with car dealers? You may have something to report them for either way.

It would be good to hear from anyone out there who is familiar with the Patriot Act and its requirements for car dealers--and whether any rules on it are just proposed or if they've been finalized. This scenario will not go away quickly even if background checks aren't actually required by law.

 

Don't even think for a moment there might be a shred of truth to that.

Here is the full text of the Patriot Act:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveilla...riot_bill.html

Search it all you want, you won't find any reference to background checks, vehicles, cars, automobiles, except in reference to a license to transport hazardous materials. As opposed to say, the Brady Bill (http://www.totse.com/en/politics/rig.../bradybil.html) which goes into specific details and at length on the type of background checks and registration needed to purchase firearms. They were just lying, plain and simple.

And the fact that the form they were trying to get me to sign said in big, black letters along the top "Credit Application" was a pretty strong tip-off.

 

Bought from Hine, paid for the car outright, had the exact same experience.

 

Here's a link to the FinCEN (part of the Treasury Dept.) advance notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register regarding whether car dealers should be exempt from the portions of the Patriot Act that dealers are asserting applies to them:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache...nd+check&hl=en

I haven't had a chance to digest this entirely and a quick search (as I like to call it, exhausting but not exhaustive) does not reveal any final rule on this yet, including any final rule posted at the FinCEN website. However, it appears that FinCEN is at least entertaining the idea that car dealers may be "financial institutions" subject to Sections 326 and 352 of the Act, apparently by the Section 326 cross-reference to Section 4(k) of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, which I haven't looked at yet. FinCEN's advance notice of proposed rulemaking appears only to solicit comments and does not appear to impose any final or temporary rules on car dealers, but it could be that their attorneys are taking a conservative approach to avoid liability--but that's just a guess, and while I hardly like the idea of being in the position of defending car dealers, I suppose that it's a possible legal stance. On the other hand, given the tenuous nature of all of this, I would have done just as you did and refused to approve a credit check.

 

Just by way of follow-up, the "Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal 2004, aka: "Patriot Act II," was apparently signed into law by Bush around December 2003, after the issuance of the FinCEN notice I referred to above. Patriot Act II apparently included a little-noticed provision that expanded the definition of "financial institutions" to include car delearships, travel agencies, casinos, real estate agents and even jewelry stores, and gives the FBI the power to obtain financial records without court order or proving just cause. You'll find a lot of lore on this if you do a Google search. I'm also attaching a link at the bottom from the Congressional website, which has the bill an related items (I have yet to wade through them myself). This has been kept pretty quiet. This still should not compel you to submit to an unwanted and unnecessary credit report, since it's hard to imagine that as serving the purposes of the law, but even if car dealers are abusing the law for their own ends, there's apparently more to it than has first been discussed.

Now Big Brother watches our car purchases, too!

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...:H.R.2417.ENR: