Looking for a new(er) car
- Edited
Love Canada, but also love the US.....and while I like to snowmobile and ice fish, cold winters and no golf for 4 months so but would like to spend part of my winters in a warmer climate. 2-3 months maybe in an area where I have a number of friends who winter Florida, or live Phoenix ?
But we're straying off Kcee's car topic.....
Weirfan But we're straying off Kcee's car topic.....
I'm ready to stray off it! Wasn't really finding anything nearby that I could look at. All of a sudden today a bunch of cars popped up on cars.com though so maybe cars are coming off leases now? Of course during my commute this morning, I was thinking "why should I get another car? this car is still a great car and do I really want another car payment?"
Worked at a Honda dealership as a salesman for 5 years before I retired. The most annoying disgusting job I ever worked. Terrible hours, asshole management, bad pay, scumbag workmates, pain in the ass costomers. After 5 years I was the most senior seniority employee in the place. I took my pension as soon as I could ( I had a DuPont pension I could take at 62). I refused to badger people on the phone or answer endless dead beat e mails. If someone wanted to come in and talk about, test and negotiate a car deal I enjoyed it and done well. The Honda customers where especially quirky. I like selling something that people are passionate about but Honda people act like they’ve shopping for a refrigerator.
That was the situation when I purchased my 2017 Volvo wagon at the end of January, 2018. I knew that the dealership had the car in their inventory for at least 4 months at the time (I later found out that it was almost exactly 5 months), and I had test driven it a couple of months earlier, but the dealership was unwilling to give me much of a discount. On a whim, I emailed their Internet Sales Manager on about January 27 or 28 and said "I see that you still have that black V60 T6 Polestar wagon; are you willing to offer a better price than I was given two months ago?" She immediately responded with a price that was about $4K less than I had been offered previously ..... and close to $7.5 to $8K below sticker. My response was "That's much better, but I'll have to think about it and discuss it with my wife." The next day, the dealership's General Sales Manager called me to see if I was REALLY interested in the car, and I told him that I was if the price was right. He responded with a price that was more than $13K below sticker, on the condition that I MUST take delivery NLT January 31 (two days later). When my wife got home from work that day, we went to the dealership, took a long test drive in the car, and agreed to the deal. I wasn't even considering trading my 2011 Mazda CX-9 GT that I had purchased from their sister dealership right next door, but they offered to buy it from me for about $2K more than I thought that I could get for it (it was paid-off and had about 78,000 miles on the odometer). By the time I was done, I only had to finance about $19K on a car that had a sticker price of more than $53,000.
This is what can happen when you buy at the end of the month or Fiscal Quarter, particularly when the dealership is not "hitting their numbers". Their motivation to move the vehicle is even stronger when the car or truck has been sitting in inventory for several months, and manufacturer carrying charges/interest are piling-up. I learned about this automobile buying method from my son, who is General Manager at three car/truck dealerships in Upstate New York. He also told me that if the dealership was having a good month and quarter, and the vehicle I wanted had just hit the dealership that month, my $13,000+ discount may have been more like $1,300.
A lot of the cars I have been looking at have sold in less than 2 weeks; so probably good cars, but not good for my negotiating power. There is one I looked at that is still on the lot though and they called this weekend to say they'd knock another $1000 off. I may go back and take another look at it this week after work.