I just bought a new car. What an awful experience. I lost track of the number of occasions where I felt like I was in the middle of a skit.
Our laws really need to be adjusted. It's insane in today's world that an auto manufacturer can't sell me what they produce directly.
My advice is to pay cash. Easy to say, right? I didn't think I had enough cash to buy my first car, and was foolish enough to think I could get a loan from a bank to buy a used car from a private party. Once I realized the futility of that plan, I ended up in a used Toyota with financing from the dealer. I assume they give big incentives on new cars when you finance with them because their banks do very well on the loans. Refinancing as soon as possible is a good idea. But you can avoid all that nonsense by paying cash. I bought my next car, a '93 Subaru Impreza, in 2004 for $500 and had my cost-per-mile under fifty cents by the end of the summer. I got almost a year out of it, then I upgraded to an '89 Civic for $1050 which I drove six years. I didn't record my gas expenses but captured most of the maintenance and legal costs and spent a total of $2782 including purchase, about 80 cents a day and under 8 cents per mile. I may have paid more for fuel than I did for the car. It was pretty reliable for a beater with 160,000 miles (199,800 when I finally donated it), but not perfect. Four new tires were $182. I put in a new $113 alternator, but paid a mechanic $377 to replace it again the next year. Replacing the exhaust "cat back" cost me $450. Replacing the front brake pads cost me $38.26 and was easier than changing the oil. Anybody can change pads on disc brakes and save a bundle. Just watch some YouTube videos for your vehicle. I saw one in which a guy with no arms did it. I was able to continue avoiding financing even for nicer "family" cars. We bought a nine-year-old Audi A6 for $4500. It came to be known as "The German Patient" and I recorded over $9000 in repairs (and probably missed recording some due to weariness) over the six years we kept it until it became a donor vehicle. I finally bought our first new car last year, another Subaru Impreza, at fifty times the price of my first one. Paying cash eliminated a lot of the headache. We had test driven lots of used cars and a few new ones, and gradually settled on the Subaru. I went home and sent e-mail to all the dealers I would be willing to drive to, about a half dozen, to get quotes on what they had in stock. It is hard to compare prices, but I put together a spreadsheet in which I added or subtracted the cost of options on the comparison vehicles to get a baseline to compare. I also dug through online forums where people posted their out-the-door prices for recent purchases. It happened that our local dealer was already a little cheaper than the others, but I still asked for a discount. I think he threw in floor mats or something. The process is still amazingly clunky. I got a roof rack we didn't want, upgraded wheels we didn't need, and a navigation system we never use because it was needed for the back-up camera we wanted. It still took a lot of time, but researching at home made me feel smarter, while sitting in a dealership made me feel dumber. One more tip. The smart money says extended warranties are a waste, since the price is calculated to be more than they expect you to pay in repairs on average. But for certain peace-of-mind reasons, I was hoping to get one. The dealer quoted me $1490, and some intel on the forums came in handy. I learned that you can buy the warranty from any dealer, and I found one in Illinois who sold me the same warranty for $770. Hope you enjoy your new car!
I like to get a lot of value out of my vehicles. My last car I had for 10 years and one of the reasons I chose my current one is that in my opinion the styling is such that it will look cool and kinda classic 10 years from now. I plan on driving it into the ground. I would have driven my last one longer except the rear panels rusted out really bad and the front end went. I could have repaired it, but given the value and the age, I would have been throwing good money after bad I think. If I really wanted the best value I would have bought a 3-4 year old used car. The reliability vs depreciated price is the best right around there. I don't know though. Since I plan on owning and driving it for a very long time, I prefer to know that I'm the only owner and have taken good care of it. I spend last Saturday poly-coating the whole thing. It's a purely synthetic "wax" (not really a wax) that is supposed to last last 6 months. Mark my words, there will be no rust on this guy at the end of its useful life :) I ran into the same issue with my heated seats. It was one small part of an expensive package full of useless junk. I read on the forums that the dealers can install OEM heated seats if you have a vehicle without, so I ended up negotiating the addition of just the heated seats for $300, which was way better than almost 2 grand worth of crap I could care less about. Cars have the same pricing structure as cable television. I looked at Imprezas too. For some reason, I really dig them. My wife thinks I'm crazy but something about it...I don't know why. I do like all hatchbacks automatically I think...and a navigation system we never use because it was needed for the back-up camera we wanted.
Impreza WRX is bad a fuck. I'm not a smart shopper with cars. I like rotating cars fairly often. Three years is about as long as I'll hang onto one. Right now I have a pimp Silverado that I'm in love with, however, so I might keep it. But I also want to get an ELR in a few years. Definitely can't afford both, but I don't think I can ever go back after driving a big truck. It's a completely different experience.
Sadly, the Big Three have come down on the side of the status quo in recent legislative battles. I think it's because they know the dealers have them over a barrel. Currently, without dealers, they can't sell product. If they cross the dealers, then they're fucked, even if being able to sell direct would be better in a perfect world. History has put them in a bad spot, so they aren't going to push for change, no matter how much sense it makes in the long run.
I don't know that they even feel they're over a barrel. They've got a model that works, and they don't have to invest in global distribution at showroom level. This would take an insane amount of capital and competency that the OEMs currently lack. There area many many industries where brands and OEMs are more than happy to outsource distribution to resellers. I've never heard even the shadow of a glimmer of a notion that the Big Three really wished they could sell direct to consumers and disassemble the dealer network, and were sorrowful that their hands were tied. Maybe this has been their secret longing for a while now, but I've not smelt it.
I agree completely that direct-sale bans should be illegal. They're horrifically oppressive, and only support an industry of leeches. But I think it's the Judicial branch's job to throw out bad state laws, not the Executive or Legislative's. Fighting tyranny with tyranny is a bad idea. This is exactly how US alcohol age limits work. Rather than pass a Federal law enforcing 21yo minimums, the Fed denies highway funding to any state with a younger law. …Which I am not ok with. It's a direct circumvention of both democracy and the Republic. I'd much rather see SCOTUS rule direct sale bans unconstitutional.a "best practices" pool and made available to states that allow for open entry into the car-selling market, while states that refuse to reform will lose out.
Yeah but the Court has already weighed in on this type of thing and they're fine with it. The fact is that Congress can't pass legislation that says, for example, that the drinking age is such-and-such. It's not in their Constitutional powers. But levying taxes and dispensing money is. Hence, many of the laws the Feds pass are of the variety "states must do X to get money", and then they make the amount of money high enough that even states with common sense leadership adopt laws like No Child Left Behind. It's crazy that we operate that way, but unless or until we have an Amendment, things will continue to be thus.Rather than pass a Federal law enforcing 21yo minimums, the Fed denies highway funding to any state with a younger law. …Which I am not ok with.
I'm currently looking for a used car. I hate it. I hate that I have to talk to multiple people about how much I make, I can't get a loan for a junker car which is all I really need, and I've already lost one car because of a misunderstanding. Plus I hate haggling.
That was one of the skits I was in recently. I spent 5 hours in a dealership waiting to and then test driving a vehicle, then haggling back and forth for a terribly long time. I finally gave my final number 30 minutes before they closed and the sales-person did the whole "let me check with my manager" bit (counter-offer incoming but nearing the end finally). He came back with some good news and bad news. The good news was that he could get "close" to my price. The bad news was that oops, his bad, -the car he was trying to sell me all day was never really for sale because it had a deposit on it, but hey he has quite a few other vehicles with similar features he could show me. Another skit I was in was the one where I went into a dealership with a printout of the vehicle I wanted, configured from Jeep's website. I presented the written configuration to the salesman and asked what the price would be with the current OEM rebates. He then proceeded to enter in a configuration for the top of the line most expensive model. I stopped him and asked why he was doing that, when I asked him to price out the specific configuration I wanted and took the time to print out and hand to him. He literally waved me off and said something to the effect of "this is just to see what we have on the lot. Don't worry, I can get you a price on that", and then just kept going. I actually just walked out of that dealership straight up. For anybody wanting to buy, I'd suggest the following: Ask for absolute out the door pricing on the exact vehicle you want, and let the dealer know what you want to pay. Do it over the phone to a number of dealerships as well. You'll be able to get them down a bit over the phone, but not terribly much. Then just stop calling. About 1.5-2 weeks after you last haggle with them seems to be the magic number where they call you back willing to go down more. After I bought my vehicle I got calls from 3 other dealerships I'd been in contact with asking if I was still interested. It's really really stupid that this is actually good advice. and I've already lost one car because of a misunderstanding.
See now I'm pissed. He seems like a nice guy, so I wanted to be able to trust him now I am starting to think this is just a tactic that was used. Why can't there be a good way to just have honest sales guys in used cars? Is it so difficult? EDIT: To add, I'm trying to get a loan through a Credit Union now so that I can basically bypass the BS
EDIT 2: Well now I'm just going to call them out because I found this review where the same tactic was used:
http://www.dealerrater.com/dealer/Suburban-Volvo-review-27124/?filter=ONLY_NEGATIVE#That was one of the skits I was in recently. I spent 5 hours in a dealership waiting to and then test driving a vehicle, then haggling back and forth for a terribly long time. I finally gave my final number 30 minutes before they closed and the sales-person did the whole "let me check with my manager" bit (counter-offer incoming but nearing the end finally). He came back with some good news and bad news. The good news was that he could get "close" to my price. The bad news was that oops, his bad, -the car he was trying to sell me all day was never really for sale because it had a deposit on it, but hey he has quite a few other vehicles with similar features he could show me.
Oh, that's the first thing I did. Marched right in with a pre-approved loan. $1000.00 of the OEM incentives were from their financing arm, so I would have lost out on that if I used my pre-approval. So instead I financed for a full 1.1% higher than what my credit union gave me. Still come out ahead over the life of the loan due to the incentive. But I have the option of re-financing with my credit union after I make 6 full payments if I want. So that's the dance I'm doing. Taking a higher rate now through a dealer, making 6 payments, then driving back to my CU and applying for a loan for a second time to refinance under them to get that point back. Did I mention that buying a car is stupid? I could go on about the other fun things that happened. Anyway, don't get any madder about the "talk to my manager" scenario than you would at anything else. All it really means is that you are getting closer to the ending phase of the negotiations. They will usually come back at this point with a price still above your number, but a little closer than when the salesman left, but they'll likely combine it with some clever financing to make up for it...stuff like pushing the terms of your financing out one more year (if you were negotiating a 60 month loan they come back with a slightly lower sticker price combined with a 72 month term). Feel free to stick to your guns here and if they don't budge, thank them, write their final terms down so that you clearly understand their offer on a white sheet of paper in front of them, tell them you'll think about it, then walk out. They'll call you within 1.5 weeks I promise. So dumb.EDIT: To add, I'm trying to get a loan through a Credit Union now so that I can basically bypass the BS
Honestly, thank you. I considered posting something on here for advice but was mostly adverse to it because of how dumb I already feel about buying a car. I guess I'll have to pretend I'm a hard ass and walk out if I'm not happy. Thanks again ecib! It really helps to hear other peoples experiences in this nonsense.
Honestly, for all the lame shit you have to do at the dealership, as long as you aren't screwed without transportation and can be a little patient, you are fine. You can do the following: 1. Pick the car and configuration you want, and decide how much you want to spend on it.
2. Look at how much you have to spend and decide before-hand EXACTLY what you want your loan payment to be each month (if you need one), and most importantly for how many months do you want to carry the loan. And that's it. Then just shop around with sleazy salesmen until you get one that will sell you the car you want at the price you want without pulling any financing stunts. After every price they give you, say "That's out the door right?" if it's not just say "I don't care then I just want to know how much you're selling it to me for out the door, including taxes". Every time. If they can't speak in those terms, then get a different dealer. Nothing worse than thinking you've agreed on a price and then going to sign the paperwork and seeing a bunch of hidden paperwork and other fees pop up. Ugh I tried to make it sound simple but I think it just sounds icky again, lol. Just know what you want and what you want to spend. You have to have a goal/guidepost.