Thanks to my readers (all one of you ;-)) for the great feedback. Melissa and I went to the Stohlman Subaru in Herndon today, test-drove an Outback 2.5i in white (a rare color for Subarus, says the dealer), wheeled-and-dealed, and put down a deposit to hold the car. We weren’t able to drive off the lot with it today, since they’re a small dealership and have limited staffing to do things like car washes and accessory installations on the weekend.
We can expect to pick it up Monday afternoon thoroughly-cleaned and with most of the accessories installed (the remainder of which will need to be installed later in the week). Thus, my bitterness toward Melissa for stealing my Civic officially ends Monday ;-).
Update 5/5/2008: Everything is worked out and ready to go. We’ll be officially purchasing the car this afternoon/evening, then picking it up (with all requested accessories installed) tomorrow. The 1-day delay is mostly because they don’t want to install that many accessories until the car is actually bought, and a couple (like the hitch receiver) take some time to install. The good news is I won’t have to bring it back in a week like I thought I’d have to for accessory installation!