New Cars--help me out a little

Plus keep in mind that warranty on a Hyundai will be affected by buying it used. You may save some money up front, but if the warranty is the big thing attracting you to the brand, you may have issues. I seem to recall that the 10-year warranty on Hyundais is not transferrable. If this is the case, you’d be much better served by picking up a lightly used Civic, Corrola or the like.

Yeah, the 5 year warranty transfers but not the 10 year drivetrain warranty.

That’s a good point about the Civic etc., especially if I can get them to tack on an extra warranty year.

-FrL-

How sadly predictable I am… :smiley:
57K miles and still going strong.

I got a 2 year warranty for my used 2000 Subaru. It’s a stand-alone deal, nothing to do with the original owner’s. One of the benefits of going through a Subaru dealer, I suppose.

You know, sometimes ya gotta read the fine print. There’s an ad today in the paper- a lease on a 2006 Mercedes C230 for $249/mo. Wow! Then read the fine print- the lease is for 27 months. Ok. It requires “$4,588 due at lease inception”. So, that’s really $419/mo. Then the kicker- .25 a mile for excess miles*- over 7500!* Since most of us drive 10-12000 miles a year, that’s an extra $625- $1125 a year- which means you’'ll owe maybe $2600 more- which *really * means $519/mo.

If you bought a similar vehicle, with a similar “down” (the ad shows another slightly used 2006 C230 for $30000), you’d pay a little less per month - for 60 months. But at the end, you’d own a car that Edmunds estimates still will be worth about $15,000.

To finish the story:

We bought a new car today. Hyundai Accent 2006, automatic, with A/C, no power doors or anything like that.

Their initial offer was something like 14,200. (Before rebate.) We had decided beforehand that 13,650 before the rebate was our “walk-out” amount–the amount above which we would not go, and would walk out the door instead. And as it turned out, after some discussion, we had reached a point where they seemed to be remaining firm at 14,000 and we were remaining firm at 13,650.

So, we left.

And they let us go.

:smack: We’d had these fantasies that the owner would come running out and give us whatever we wanted as along as we’d buy the car. But no such luck: The salesperson (very nicely, no malice) had simply commented, “Well, I could easily sell this car to the next inquirer at MSRP so… I respect your decision, and… good bye.”

Oops.

We drove around for about 45 minutes, grabbed some lunch, asked each other what we should do. Did we want to cave and sheepishly return, or did we want to spend the rest of the day haggling with other dealers with very possibly similar results?

In the end we caved: I called in, said “will you do it for 13,900?” and they agreed. We came back, and bought the car. They were honest and friendly–no inappropriate tacked on fees or anything like that, no further haggling over the price. (I’m guessing we probably could have gotten it for 13,800, but I’m not going to worry over a hundred bucks.)

So that’s it. 13,900 plus rebate was our deal. In the end I think this was a fair-to-good deal. Consumer reports tells me 14,300 is a reasonable “starting place” for negotiations. (That’s CR’s “bottom line” plus 4 percent.) I take it the expectation was that I would, if lucky, pay 14,300, and if unlucky, pay more. So, since I got 400 below this “starting place” I think I did okay.

Thanks for everyone’s help. Go ahead and raz me if you think I could have done better. :slight_smile:

-FrL-

PS Talking to the sales guy after all was over and done with, he said (maybe I should say “claimed”) he had had two “walkouts” already in the last few weeks, and both had returned. So maybe the staging of a walkout is no longer a viable tactic in this game! They may be onto us!

In this case, that statement is particularly true.