All-in-one Automotive Shopping Centre
After having saved up diligently for a number of years it was time to reward myself with a car upgrade to replace the old 2010 vehicle I had been driving.
First order of business was checking the used market for a good deal, but over three months passed and nothing suitable came up.
I found that either pricing was above market value, the car I wanted was not widely available or there was something that was wrong with the vehicle which was a deal breaker for me.
I decided it was time to purchase my first brand new vehicle instead. The idea of having peace of mind about the car’s quality was appealing and I definitely wanted to avoid buying a lemon. And what better place to do it than in Robina with its all-in-one Automall.
Having now done my research, I was able to go to the Robina Automall and simply browse all options in my price range and preferred sedan car type.
I visited Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Toyota and Volkswagon. But there are plenty more brands available there if you have a brand preference including Holden, Hyundai, Kia, Mistubishi, Mercedes Benz and Subaru. In fact, the only major brand missing from the Automall is Ford.
The staff at each dealership are happy to let you test drive a vehicle and go further but I needed to do more research on my own first.
This initial browse through helped me narrow the amount of cars down a bit based on price and what’s available, it also allowed me to decide on which sedan options were likely to suit me.
So, it was time to do some more research and narrow down my expansive options to a shortlist.
When making bigger investments, my process has always been to see what independent experts deem as the best in the product range or the best value, since they’re more knowledgeable and experienced in this field as they do it for a living.
Most importantly, they have access to more products on the market and are able to test them for comparisons.
The information is freely available online and this method hasn’t left me with a bad experience yet (touch wood).
Of course it’s important to make sure the reviewer does have expertise in the field and isn’t being sponsored by the company for which the product is being reviewed.
After choosing the actual category (small, but not too small) as I wanted fuel efficiency and safety without too much comfort gone, I visited the best car winners of 2016 website as my starting point and it helped me greatly.
The methodology for judging the cars on the website is impressive and helped me narrow it down greatly in my case (I only looked at the podium), but I followed up with other websites to confirm the findings.
Based on this additional research, I managed to narrow it down to just the one vehicle and booked in my test drive at the James Frizzele’s Mazda dealership.
If you’ve got more than one vehicle on your radar, it’s best to test drive them all in one day to have a more accurate comparison.
After test driving the Mazda 3 which consisted of a good loop around Robina with highway driving included, it was pretty much what I expected from the reviews.
Of course the dealership was keen to negotiate a sale on the spot and I learned the drive away price, but I still needed to get a feel for the going price at other dealerships.
A few phone calls later I found that the Robina dealership was the most competitive and also had an extended warranty option which extends the standard Mazda three year warranty to six years and was very much of interest.
One last visit saw some tense negotiations resulting in a final price that I was happy with. All I can say is, if you’re a good negotiator, you will get a lot more value out of your purchase.
Signing the contract after reading it thoroughly I was informed the particular vehicle would arrive within 5 weeks which I was okay with.
However, just before leaving one of the staff informed me the car should definitely arrive earlier.
I was happy to receive a call just over two weeks later and was soon driving away in my brand new car.
Robina Automall helped immensely with my car shopping experience and I highly recommend visiting if you’re searching for your next new or dealership used vehicle.
