Kelley Blue Book (KBB) online pricing tool shows a price range for a 2014 Honda CR-V under invoice. Is that reality? Can one really expect to buy a new car LESS THAN invoice?
At the end of the year, or after a dealer has had a car on the lot for a certain amount of time while paying interest on the money they needed to purchase it you can buy cars for under invoice. I don’t know how that relates to the KBB price though.
FYI: A 2014 is the 2015 model year. This is a new car, although one may usually associate Kelley with used car pricing only.
First of all, ignore KBB. It’s crap.
Second of all, ignore the invoice on a car. Also crap. (I’m assuming you mean the invoice sheet the salesperson pulls out, not the sticker on the car which is even more misleading.)
The financial arrangements between makers and dealers is incredibly complex. The invoice price is “for that car”. But dealers buy cars in groups, get all sorts of discounts, back end deals, etc.
What the dealer pays is below invoice, sometimes way below that after incentives and such.
It’s rare that a car commands the actual invoice price. There are some ‘hot’ cars out there which might command more than invoice via crap add-ons such as paint protection, but these are rare.
On rule of thumb is that you should pay the invoice price once title and taxes are included. Of course that depends on the size of the sales, and maybe property, tax where you buy the vehicle. Also there could be things like factory rebates to factor in.
I’ve never paid the invoice price for any new car and I’ve been buying them since 1978.
Are you sure you’re thinking invoice and not MSRP? MSRP has always been wishful thinking on the carmakers’ part, but invoice at least used to actually be the dealer’s cost for the car and it would be extremely unusual to pay less than it. These days they kind of fudge the the invoice price since everyone can just get it off the internet, but that’s a relatively recent development. Paying less than “invoice” isn’t as uncommon now but it still isn’t necessarily the norm, depending on what kind of car you’re looking at.
“Invoice” is not the price the dealer pays for the car - as others have noted, there are incentives and such so that the cost to the dealer is considerably yes.
“We’re selling this car under invoice” is supposed to get you to think they’re losing money on the deal, but they’re still getting a sizable profit.
OP try looking Truecar.com