There really isn’t that much wiggle room on this particular vehicle. Invoice is $19,316 and MSRP is $20,010 so we’re really talking about $700 here.
There’s no way around paying sales tax and tag/title/license fees or negotiating with them since these are paid to the state so just consider those amounts set in stone and tack them on at the end.
It looks like there’s no current incentives or rebates available on this vehicle either so that’s a dead end.
So what your left with is seeing how desperate they are to make a sale on what I believe to be a rather popular vehicle that they probably don’t have a whole lot of problems moving.
Edmund’s says most people are paying around $19,840 (you pay tax and fees) so if you can get it for less than that consider it’s a fair deal.
You could always come up with a “fair” price of your own and offer them the incentive of a quick sale in which they don’t have to spend much time with you.
“$19,516 right now with cash, I don’t need a test drive, you don’t have to walk me through the features, I’ll sign the papers and be out of your hair in 30 minutes, you’ll make a quick $200.”
Time is valuable to these guys especially on a busy weekend and they’ll be more agreeable to making $200 in 30 minutes rather than $200 after haggling for 4 hours.
This. It’s a common misconception that if you are paying cash for the car that the dealer will give you more favorable terms. They aren’t the bank, so they are getting full price for the car anyways.
Whether that’s from corporate financing, bank financing, or your checking account, the dealer has money in hand at the end of the deal no matter which way you go. And like StG said, sometimes they make money by selling the GMAC or whatever financing that they are tied to.
**Drove the car home today. **
I offered 18,500 and immediately got a facial expression that I could only guess was “Wrong Answer”. To clarify, the Dealer asked if 18,5 was my out the door price. Figuring that I was about to hang myself here, I told him that 20k was my out the door price.
He crunched the numbers, and offered 20,777.66
As I was willing to go up to 22k, I told him I would do it at 20.7
BUT THEN
After we agreed to the price, a manager came in and asked to talk to me. He said he had met me before*, but I honestly couldn’t place him. He then asked me to tell him what I didn’t like about the car. He said he was willing to put me in another car [in general] on the lot for the same 20,777.
However, it felt so much like a Good Cop / Bad Cop situation. The “Manager” was closer to my age [28] and I think it was my brain playing tricks on me, but I could see his biceps through his shirt.
He asked me a few times if he could put me in something else. I told him, a few times, that I was fine with the car and price I had, that I had done research on this car, and that it was what I wanted.
**
I am under the assumption that this was nothing more than a ploy to put me in to a “cheaper” car at the same price. -To recoup the loss.** I firmly believe that I had made such a great offer [relative term, I know] and resulting sale with the Fit, that the dealership was more or less instituting damage control.
How far off base am I here on this ? Is this a common occurrence? It seems so clear to me in hindsight, that this is what was going on.
- I honestly never met the guy before, I think this was his first [and opening] mistake at a gambit to get me on his “good” side, all buddy buddy like, to play into him more.
Also, I feel soooo paranoid now that I got the car. I guess this too is a common occurrence?
Don’t flatter yourself. If the dealership was going to make a loss on the sale, they wouldn’t have made the sale. I’m not quite sure exactly what the guy was playing at, but you can rest assured that they did not take a loss on the car they sold to you.
Go in looking for the color they don’t have - thats the one you ‘really want’ - knowing the color you really want is that ‘ugly color’ over there - use that as another bargaining tool. Tell them you don’t care about the add-ons it might have - etc - take away any power approach they might have.
We saved 3k that way on a new car for the daughter -
To know if you got a deal or not you really have to know what you paid “just for the car”. If you paid 20,700 out the door what did your paperwork say you paid in sales tax and registration fees?
Take those off and I’m guessing you still paid the $19,900.
(According to Edmunds Georgia had one of the lowest vehicile registry fees. It’s something like $35.)
The Doc fee was 600.
Granted they can make numbers look like anything, but the itemized bill I saw put the car itself at 18,799.
Even If I didn’t get a “Deal” on it, I knew the money I had going in, and what else I wanted to do with the remainder.
It’s too late to advise you but when buying future cars you offer dealer cost + what is a decent markup. For an econobox that would be in the $75 to $150 range. You’ll have to look up the markup used for the car you’re buying and back them out to get the dealer cost. Usually there is one markup for the base car and a different one for options. You would also have to argue over dealer options like pin striping which has a high profit margin. Offer no more than half the value for that.
From there add in transportation costs and any other legitimate costs needed to transfer the car over.
I want to also recommend a car buying service for anyone looking to buy a new car.
I’ve been buying cars for over 30 years and I honestly think the days of massive haggling for a new car are essentially at an end. I know a few guys who own new car dealerships and most of them are ecstatic if they can get 8% profit on a car.
If you think about the fact that these are very big ticket items, 8% profit isn’t very good. Grocery stores get 2-3% on much smaller ticket items that do not cost as much to move or keep in inventory and which sell in far greater volume.
From what I’ve heard from people in the know, is buyers are now so informed by services like KBB, Edmunds (especially Edmunds TMV numbers) that buyers come in and are often pretty much unwilling to pay anything above a number equal to or lower than Edmunds TMV for the vehicle.
The one guy I know who owns a Volkswagen dealership has said they still get customers who come in expecting to get well below invoice, and he said they will only sell a car below invoice under one condition, and that is if there is a cash incentive from the manufacturer. So they might go $500 below invoice if there is a $1500 manufacturer’s incentive, but otherwise he said he’s fine letting people walk off the lot theatrically and he said he doesn’t care if they come back, because he can’t stay in business by selling below cost on everything–even with the operations of the service department and etc.
I think the key thing these days is invoice price that dealers show you is much more likely to be “legit” because dealers know buyers are more informed these days. I’m not saying dealers don’t still try to play games, but the model I’m seeing at dealers selling new cars is much more along the lines of them saying “here is our lowest price, it’s barely over invoice, and this invoice is the real deal” and unless there are manufacturer incentives it is unlikely you will get a car for much lower.
That takes us back to the auto purchasing programs. USAA has such a program, and so do various other entities. All of the ones I’m aware of are actually just the same thing: the Zag Network USAA and American Express both use Zag to “power” their car buying program and so does every other car buying service I’m aware of…basically Zag creates these “branded” front ends for their service that you can access if you meet the membership criteria. If you do not have USAA then if you have an American Express card that is an easy way to get access, if you have Sallie Mae student loans that is another easy way, and if all else fails it looks like Overstock.com membership will also get you access to the Zag network.
Anyway, once you’re on the buying service just configure the new car you want and you will receive three offers from car dealerships. The car buying service has statistics that will show you the average price paid for the vehicle, generally speaking if you can get under that average it means you’ve done better than 50% of buyers and to me that’s a reasonable place to be, getting under 50% also usually, in my experience, coincides with paying at or under the Edmunds TMV for the vehicle.
The dealer quotes are supposed to be “guaranteed.” What this means is dealers that are members of the Zag Network have agreed to honor that price and not to play games on it, if they try to play games you can walk out and report them to the car buying program (which may not be a big deal if the dealer doesn’t get a lot of business through the program.)
The nice thing about the car buying program is they collect information on the dealer, so you get the dealer’s quote plus it will state what that dealer’s documentation fee is. Note that while you can just go and get your car at the price quoted, it’s actually still possible to do some haggling even with a car buying program (although that goes against the point for some users.)
What I actually did was I got my three quotes, I can’t remember the numbers but basically one dealer that was really close to me quoted something like $26,500 with a $500 documentation fee. Another dealer in Tennessee quoted me $26,750 with a $150 documentation fee. So the local dealer my final price on the bill of sale before taxes, titles, and registration (aka State fees that can’t be negotiated) was $27,000 while the dealer in Tennessee my price was going to be $26,900.
So I emailed the internet sales manager at the local dealership and basically said, “Hey I just received a quote through the USAA Car Buying program from you and it’s a competitive offer but when I factor in your documentation fee you’re about $100 over a different dealer. I’d really like to buy from you but if you can’t find a way to come down $100 I won’t be able to.” Now, car dealers consider the doc. fee to be sacrosanct so it is unlikely it will ever be reduced, that just means their sale price has to be reduced to compensate. In this scenario the local dealer came down $100 off their offer on the car buying program and I went in and bought the vehicle. Note I didn’t mention the other dealership I was playing off on them was in Tennessee, because the dealer would have probably tried to argue about how the $100 wasn’t worth a trip to Tennessee, and espousing all the other benefits of buying locally. The dealer would be 100% right, I would not drive to Tennessee to buy a car just to save $100, but he didn’t need to know those details.
I did not need a test drive of the vehicle so I actually told the dealership to finish all the paper work and fax the bill of sale to USAA (I financed through them), the next morning the sales manager delivered the vehicle to my office where I signed all the documentation, gave him a personal check for the down payment and took delivery of the vehicle. According to the statistics on the buying program’s website the price I paid was in the lowest 5% of all customers who had bought cars through the program, and it was under Edmund’s TMV value. All told I spent about 30 minutes on buying the car, versus probably ~16-24 hours in the past I’ve spent buying cars when you factor in going to several dealerships in person, waiting the 2-3 hours it always takes to finish the paper work and etc.