The new car

Well, I did get a new car.  And it's red, which is what I wanted.  The CR-V is gone.  To be perfectly honest, I really didn't like that car.  Black leather interior is horrible if you have big dogs that drool.  My Ipod wouldn't work, I kept getting USB errors.  The driver's seat belt never went back, you'd have to give it a tug just to get it to retract.  Road noise was loud - that was a major complaint back in the 2013 reviews.  The car just wasn't a good fit.  In fact, this is the 2nd Honda which wasn't a good fit.  Just because they tend to last forever, doesn't mean you're going to like the car.  This is why I lease.  When the lease is up, if I like the car, I just buy it.  I bought the first car I leased, a Saturn 2000 because I liked it.  The next two cars, both Hondas, I hated.
Anyway, my final decision was between a Subaru Forester and a Nissan Rogue.  I'd driven both over two weeks ago and had been doing my research.  Picking the options I wanted for both cars, I made appointments with both dealers.  I met with Mike at Faulkner Subaru first.  He noted down everything I wanted and then disappeared into a back room.  About 10 minutes later he returned and told me there were no Forester 2.5I Touring, Venetian Red Pearl cars to be had.  Sitting down opposite me, he said "now what options can you live without."  Not the right thing to say.  If I'm going to get a new car, I don't want to be told I'm going to have to downgrade.  He talked about having one shipped in on the "pipeline," of course these were all lower end models, less expensive but more poorly equipped.  I nodded and smiled and told him I still needed to talk to Nissan, and that I'd let him know what my decision was going to be.
When I got to Brenner Nissan, I sat down with my salesman Charlie.  He said, "let's go over again what it is you're looking for."  We looked at the options available.  And then he said, "let me go check my inventory."  He came back about 3 minutes later and said "I have a fully loaded Rogue SL in my lot, would you like to take a look at it?"  Of course, it had everything in it I was looking for.  Two hours later I drove out of their lot in my new Rogue.

The new car

I did sent Mike at Subaru and email notifying him of my choice in cars.  He asked why, so I responded:  "Availability.  When someone walks into your showroom and asks for a certain type of car, don't tell them "that's nice, but this is all we can give you."