That goes for checks, too, and I’m pretty sure I had to fill out one of those when closing my last mortgage.
We’ve always just written a personal check. The car dealers always seemed happy with that arrangement and cheerfully let us drive our new car home.
In fact, the last two times we purchased a car we didn’t have the title to the car we were trading in with us or the right amount of funds in the checking account (we had decided on a whim to look at new cars, the title to the old car was in our safe deposit box, and the funds we were going to use to purchase a car was in the savings account), and the dealers told us they’d hold the check for a day to give us a chance to transfer the money and would we bring in the old title “sometime in the next couple of days”. Both times we left the old car at the dealer’s and drove off in our new car
Note that the new car dealer REALLY wants to sell you one of his cars…
I’ve used personal checks before. I always try to do it during regular business hours so that they can call the bank and verify the funds. I give the bank a heads-up so it goes smoothly.
I was pretty ticked when I bought my pickup truck and tried to put it on my Visa card that gives me frequent flier miles. The dealership said they would only allow $5,000 to go on the card, and the rest would have to be cash or check.
Most car dealers are pretty anxious to get a sale. Unless you give them some reason to think you are scamming them they will most likely take a personal check.
In fact, the checkbook is a helpful tool for forcing them to reveal any hidden costs. I always tell the salesman and the dealer’s reps, “The price we are discussing is the amount I’m going to write on the check. When we agree on a price then that is the Paid in Full Price”. Some dealers refer to that as the (OTD) Out the Door price.
My father bought a Mercedes on his Master Card, he got tons of airline miles he’s still trying to use.
Out here in the sticks it wasn’t all that long ago. It was the federal/comptroller of the currency/bank examiner rules requiring an explanation for larger cash deposits to bank accounts that put an end to the practice. It was fairly common to have large purchases paid for not only with folding green but musty folding green to boot. Musty because it had been stashed in a glass jar and buried in the barn yard. When it came into my place it went to the bank right away. Otherwise it would stink up the whole office and you don’t want to air out the place in the middle of an Iowa January.
Not surprising, since the amount they have to pay to the credit card company eats into their profits by quite a bit.
I used a personal check when I bought my car 6 weeks ago. They actually ran a credit check on me before they took it.
I paid with a debit card.
In rural Thailand, cars new and old are often purchased with cash. And I don’t mean bank drafts or personal checks, I mean piles of banknotes. First time we bought a pickup, I stopped at bank and transferred money to Toyota’s account. Bank officer acted like I was crazy and would never see money or pickup again. A few years later we bought another pickup; I went out of the way to query the Toyota managers: Wouldn’t a bank draft be more convenient? No, they definitely wanted actual banknotes. We did the withdrawal paperwork at one bank branch and were sent to another branch since the first was running low on cash. The chief Toyota cashier counted all our banknotes and presumably then scurried back to the same branch and deposited them!
(Many years ago in California, a woman told me about wanting to pay cash for a new sportscar but needing to arrange a loan instead: apparently the dealer had told her that cash purchase would lead to an undesired IRS notification!)
If the dealer has a financing department, I’m sure they’d tell all kinds of stories in that case . . .
But she didn’t have credit good enough for a loan! That’s why she told me the story in the first place: she wanted me to cosign. (Now I’ll agree the whole story might have been an effort to fleece gullible septimus. 
Give me a little credit: I didn’t fall for it!)
LOL. Then the merchant swipes your card for a $25,000 charge and it’s declined as ‘suspicious’, and when you call your bank they tell you that you have to pre-approve charges over a certain amount. That’s how that works.
The vendor should have happily volunteered to run the transaction, recomputed to add the credit card commission to your total cost. 2% of $25,000 is 500 bucks, not exactly chump change. Actually it’s kind of presumptuous on your part to effectively spring a $500 surcharge on the dealer at the last minute and not expect there to be any repercussions.
My wife bought a new Toyota a month or two ago with a personal check. When she gave them the check, they asked her to complete a credit application.
-She refused, as she was not requesting credit.
-They said it was required by the Patriot Act (I believe they called it “the Terrorism Act”).
-She asked them to show her a the portion of the act requiring credit applications for personal checks. She even had the idiots pull the Act up on their computers to find - of course - no such provision existed.
-So they changed their tune and said “How do we know your check is any good?”
-My wife thanked them for suggesting she was a thief, showed them her driver’s license, and reminded them that this was the 5th car we had bought from and had serviced by them, all the while living at the same address with the same phone number less than 5 miles away. She reminded them that they could call the bank (less than 2 miles from them) to inquire as to whether sufficient funds existed.
-She offered to put it on a credit card.
-They were aghast at the suggestion, as they would have to pay the credit company a fee.
-Finally, they made a HUGE exception in JUST HER CASE, and accepted the check without a completed credit application.
What BS - and yet another example of why I let her deal with such things.
When I bought my car used from a private party in November, I brought a wad of hundreds.
If you’re not paying in dollar coins and/or $2 bills, you’re a pussy.
These days with sales so low you could probably buy a car by trading in some cows.
At one point, I worked in a car dealership as a receptionist, so I’d be the person who’d process payments for cars, tags, etc. This was a medium-sized dealership in a large chain, and they were more than happy to take full payment for cars in the form of cash, check, or credit card. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable payment-wise; if they give you a hassle about financing or a credit check, don’t buy from that dealership-- there’s no need for them to check your credit if you’re paying for it in cash.
I paid for my current car at a used car dealer w/ 50 $100 bills. He had no problem with that. He even wrote it up as $3500, instead, cheating the state sales-tax man. Saved me $120.
Ditto. And this was just last summer, in my case.
I’ve purchased my last five cars with a personal check. No problems, ever. They call the bank before you ever get the keys.
Felt I oughtta clarify that 25 of them doesn’t really make all that big of a “wad” - just bigger than the number of singles I generally carry.
Yes, I happily drive a cheap POS car! 