09/19/2000

A little over four weeks ago, I took delivery of my Silverstone S2000. After being on the waiting list for about 7 months at a local dealership in Austin, TX, I received an email from Eric Mendez of Twin City Honda in Port Arthur, TX. He told me that he could order an S2000 for me, have it arrive in less than 2 months, and sell it to me at MSRP. The drive to Port Arthur from Austin would be about 5 hours, but it was definitely worth it since I could start enjoying the S2000 sooner and was able to choose my color. At many dealerships, when you are on a waiting list, you do not get a choice of colors. If it's your turn and a car comes in, you can either accept that color or pass it on the next person.

Eric kept me informed of the status of my order after I sent in the deposit. He told me when it was entered into Honda's computers for building and when they actually started building the car in Tochigi, Japan. He then told me that the car had been finished in Japan and was awaiting shipment to the US. Two weeks later, Eric emailed me a picture of my S2000 on the transport truck and said that the car had arrived. See picture below. All this had occurred in less than 1.5 months. I wished Eric had contacted me sooner during my long wait in Austin! ;-)

My S2000 waiting to get unloaded.

I arrived at Twin City Honda to see a very clean, brand new look to a Honda dealership. Eric informed me that Honda was getting all the dealerships to follow a certain look with no separated areas. Everything would flow together and all the various finance, parts, service departments would be easily accessible. Central to the dealership was an information center that resembled a small cafe. See picture below. I thought the atmosphere would make things a lot less intimidating to the average buyer.

Typical Honda dealership information center

You can just sit down and look through brochures or play with the computer kiosk that had lots of cool videos of the Honda products. Unfortunately, I was not able to grab any of the video files from the computer kiosk. I wished I had brought my laptop. It would be great if we were able to post these video files. I did get one video through my miniDV camcorder, but the quality is going to be really bad since there was a lot of glare. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could send some of the videos to us.

The computer kiosk has lots of really good videos. Be sure to check it out.

I learned that the employees of Twin City Honda was very internet friendly. They are of course fans of the TOV and have a passion for the Honda heritage.

I wished that all car buying experiences could be like this. The price is agreed upon ahead of time and so all that needs to be done at the dealership is to go over the paperwork and answer any other questions. Admittedly, this would suit the more knowledgeable car buyers who already knows about the Honda/Acura they want to buy. For those that need to test drive a car or need to do more comparison shopping, then a visit to the dealer to do these things would be more appropriate.

Eric gives me the keys to my new S2000.