A few weeks ago we tried to buy a new car. It seemed a better investment than the stock market at this point. Our experience taught us lessons about the economy and car dealers’ poor marketing skills as well as providing a window into the ideas non-city people have about living in the city.

First of all, we found few cars. No wonder the economy is in the tank. The first dealer’s showroom had five black or white Japanese-make cars. One of them had been sold to a friend of ours, we discovered. The salesman claimed to have at least one other car upstairs. He was obviously auto-obsessed—he knew everything about his cars and everyone else’s. He didn’t diss Consumer Reports. But this appealing young man was saddled with rear-wheel drive on the hybrid we were considering. What car manufacturer thinks it is a good idea to sell rear-wheel drive in icy New England? We later wondered if they had brought this car up from the south so they’d have something on the floor to show. We moved on.

Our next visit was to the showroom of the kind of Japanese car we already owned. This car had served us well for six years. We were puzzled that only used cars were in the showroom. In the back room were three new cars—black and white—but not the version we were looking for, and they didn’t know if they could find the hybrid we were considering at any New England dealership. Moreover, the 2012 cars hadn’t arrived, the salesman said, and he didn’t know when they would do so. The earthquake and the tsunami had done a job on car manufacturing. The good news for him was that he was selling a lot of used cars. But that wasn’t what we wanted.

So I went alone to scout out another Japanese make. Again, black, white and silver cars. But no hybrid and only a few new cars of any type. Consumer Reports said this make had clunky shifting, and when I test-drove it I heard the clunk. The salesman said Consumer Reports didn’t know what it was talking about. A few days later the salesman called and said he had located a car that filled some of our requirements, but by then, put off by the clunk, we had moved on to German cars. Surely German manufacturing hadn’t been halted by an earthquake or a tsunami.

The German-car salesman explained why he had only black and white cars. According to him, every car manufacturer, German, Japanese and everything in between, ordered paint from the same Japanese car paint factory. The factory not been destroyed, but had been damaged, and it was producing only black and white paint and sometimes silver.

The salesman tried to peg us. Where did we live? What was my husband’s profession? (He didn’t ask about my profession, and I held it against him.) He said the car he showed us would be good for city driving. We told him we didn’t much drive in Boston, except when we had to go through the city to the Mass Pike or another interstate, heading for other parts of New England. It also soon became clear to this puzzled salesman that, while most of his customers had at least two cars, this would be our only car. We could easily share.

This salesman said he didn’t know if he could find a car that met our requirements. But he would try. We were ready to spend the money. We never heard from him again.

We had exhausted Boston car dealers. So we went to New Hampshire since we were headed there anyway. This dealer also had few cars of either the 2011 or the 2012 variety. When I said I wanted a light colored interior so it didn’t look like a hearse, he found the one car in the lot that had such colors. It was silver. It wasn’t a hybrid, but, surprisingly, it got good gas mileage anyway. We bought it.

You might ask why we didn’t visit American automakers’ showrooms. One look at a nearby street, where only three out of the 30 vehicles I counted were American brands, tells me you don’t visit American auto companies’ showrooms either. Consumer Reports still doesn’t recommend many American brands yet, and, in our case, it is the painful reminder of our first two cars—Chevrolets—which spent most of their time in the repair shop, that made us wary.

Learning that most car dealers thought we would surely have had two cars in our family, I have given in to their expectations. I call our new car my husband’s car. I claim I don’t have one. But my husband, from time to time, lets me drive his.