Selling it

Here's our annual roundup of car-related ads that caught our eye. Given the current plight of auto dealers, we're sure that all have now seen the light and are telling the whole truth and offering great prices. Or not.

Fraternal triplets

That Chevy Colorado sure has a wide range of trim lines.

Long wait for a rebate

This incentive from a Florida car dealer seemed great until you got to the details. Every month, once you'd bought $100 of gas, you had to send your original receipts to a reward program to get a $25 rebate voucher. You could redeem one voucher per month. Twenty months later, after lots of receipt-collecting-and-sending, you'd finish using the coupon.

Truth in advertising?

The Kia Sedona may not be the best car in the world, but this dealer's assessment seems pretty harsh.

Car-veat emptor

A North Carolina Saturn dealer offered to pay "100% of the base model MSRP" for trade-ins. The details: a deduction of 15 to 45 cents per mile and a trade-in cap of the current Kelley Blue Book value. One Saturn owner calculated that even with the smallest deduction, his 2000 model would fetch less than market value.

What's included?

So the offer is for those helium cars we've heard about.

Gotcha!

The economic-stimulus payments of last spring spawned faux tax mail from a car-stereo shop in California and a Dodge dealer in Texas.

Definition, please

A Virginia Chrysler dealer, who also sells Dodges and Jeeps, found a new meaning for "fuel-efficient." As in 18 mpg, on average. The listed models' overall mpg in our tests: 16, 21, 20, 25, 20, 13, 20, 15, and 15.

That personal touch

This notice told a "Valued Customer" that her vehicle's factory warranty was going to expire. The recipient was 83 at the time, lived in a nursing home, and had never driven a car or had a driver's license.