We did something in 2016 that we had never done before — we bought a brand new car from a dealership.
The Demise of Our Beater
I left for a week-long Lake Powell canyoneering trip on a Sunday evening. I drove our nice car (the 2005 Toyota Sequoia with 181,000 miles that we always fight over who gets to drive) because I was towing the boat. That left my wife with the crappy car (the 2002 Dodge Durango with 180,000 miles on it that neither of us ever liked all that much, but that only cost us $4K in 2010.) The car had developed a bit of a noise from the engine in the previous couple of days, but seemed to be running fine when I left.
Monday morning, I put the boat in the water and we headed off into the boondocks to do a canyon. Meanwhile, Katie ran her first errand in the Durango. That noise got much louder and the car was barely running. She limped it into the mechanic, who pronounced it. “Time of Death- 9:47.” The engine was shot. She went home, got the title, and sold it to a scrapyard for $225.
By the time I spoke to her that evening, she was driving my sister's spare car (which makes the Durango look really nice) and making plans to get a new car. Secretly, I was super excited. I mean, sure it sucks to have to buy a new car, but you also get a new car out of the experience. I would have preferred that someone backed into it in the parking lot (which also would have totaled it but would have gotten me a lot more money from the insurance company) but the engine blowing up is a close second. On Monday morning, after waking up from my night shift, we headed on down to the local dealers.
New Car Shopping
You see, the Durango was our last beater. As I wrote about earlier this year, I think poor people ought to drive cheap cars but I'm okay with rich people driving whatever they want.
What we were doing while the car was being coded back home
In this case, a rich person is someone who is on track to meet their savings goals and has the cash to pay for the car. As discussed previously, my goal isn't to die with the biggest possible stash. Thanks to investing, I fully intend to spend more money than I ever earn during my life. I deferred spending as a resident and young attending so that I could spend MORE MONEY later, so long as it was spent on something that increased happiness.
So our plan when one of our cars died was to go buy another Sequoia. However, I didn't like the windshield in the newer Sequoias as much as I liked the more vertical one in the older ones, and although it has more power, the gas mileage isn't as good as you can get with a Suburban. So we decided we'd better go check out a suburban too. Those of you who are tall enough to have to lean forward to see if the traffic light is green know what I'm talking about.
Although the Suburban had a lot more headroom, it was a little long for my taste, looked and drove like a bus, and despite the headroom didn't improve my ability to see the traffic lights. So we decided to get another Sequoia. The Sequoia comes in three trim levels — SR5, Limited, and Platinum. For better or for worse, that's pretty much the only decision you have to make aside from desired color, which actually makes negotiation a lot more straightforward.
The first dealership we went to didn't have a Limited, which is what our old one was and what we thought we wanted, so we went to a second dealership to look at one. We had a few questions on options so we went inside with the salesman and got all of our questions answered. Then, and this is key, we stood up and walked out. Not because we didn't know what we want, because we then did. But simply to improve our negotiating position.
How to Negotiate
You see, in negotiating there are a few principles to be aware of:
- Information is power
- Negotiate on your own turf
- Negotiate on your time table
- Never buy stuff when you're hungry
- Never be more desperate to buy something than the guy is to sell it
I was hungry. So we went to In-n-Out Burger, had fries, a double-double (mine was animal style, hers protein style), and a strawberry shake. Mostly because that's pretty much all they serve there. Then we went home and I sat down on the computer.
The stalking was done, now all we had to do was pull the trigger. I was no longer hungry, I was no longer on their turf, and I was no longer on their time table. All I had to do was acquire sufficient information so that I was no longer at an information disadvantage.
Google showed me there were six Toyota dealerships that I was willing to drive to in order to buy a new car. I thought, “Sweet! This is going to be way easier than negotiating the boat,” where there was only one dealership in the state and they had a monopoly (other dealerships wouldn't even sell to me if I drove out of state.) So I emailed all of the dealerships this email:
I'm interested in buying a 2016 4×4 Sequoia Limited with Pyrite exterior and Graphite interior as soon as possible at the lowest possible price and am contacting several local dealers. Please quote me your very best out the door (including tax, title, and licensing) price and let me know when it can be available for purchase.
What does that email do? Several things. It tells the guy on the other end that I'm
- Very serious about buying,
- That I already know exactly what I want,
- That I know what the car is worth,
- That he has competition,
-
The Durango that helped us get rich
That I'm not going to fall for silly pricing tricks,
- That he better not drag his feet getting me a quote.
Reviewing the Offers
Then I went to work. By the time I got out of bed the next afternoon, I had two offers, several “here's what we have” and a couple of “please come on down and we'll talk” emails. The two offers for an out the door price were $61,300 and $60,100. Were those a good price? Well, let's take a look.
First, I went to Truecar, which gives you this nice graph you see above with all kinds of useful information including the MSRP, the average paid, and the factory invoice. It does not, however, give you a true “out the door” price. But it isn't that hard to figure out.
For example, the sales tax around here is 6.85%, and 6.85% of $60K is $4,110. So subtracting $4,110 from the first offer, $60,100, leaves me with $56K. I'm already below the factory invoice, well into the “great price” category, and knocking on the door to the “exceptional price” category.
Not sure what people like about that “new car smell” but it does smell better than hockey gear
I confirmed this by going to a couple more similar websites such as Kelley Blue Book, which listed the “fair price” as $57,205. We checked with USAA and Costco which have car buying programs. Costco was the better one, which was $300 above factory invoice. That told me that these offers were serious offers and also that I probably wouldn't get a dramatically lower price.
The Final Price
My goal with this negotiation wasn't to get the lowest possible price. I primarily wanted to avoid being ripped off, but secondarily I wanted to minimize the time spent and I wanted to buy the car from the dealership closest to my house, since the car comes with 2 years of maintenance and a 3-5 year warranty. I wasn't going to drive another 30-45 minutes to buy it much less to get it serviced for an extra $50 discount. But the dealers didn't know that. They didn't even know where I lived.
I was also able to check the online inventory for all six dealers. It turns out there were only two of these vehicles between the six dealers, and neither of them were at either of the dealerships I had already visited, including my preferred one.
I went back and forth by email and phone a couple of times between the lowest cost dealer and my preferred dealer. That knocked a couple hundred more off the price and eventually, the preferred dealer agreed to get the car from the other dealer that had it and sell it to me while matching the price, out the door for $59,900. That corresponded to a purchase price of $55,536.15. Not quite “exceptional” but good enough for my purposes, especially when I was able to get it from the dealer closest to my house.
I gave them a $3K credit card deposit (couldn't talk them into letting me make a larger one) and we arranged a time to come in, sign papers, and pick it up. Not too bad. 24 hours of effort, no pressured sales, a good price, and a good experience. (Much better than buying the boat .) I actually had more trouble getting Ally Bank to send a wire for the cash than anything else.
So, now we have two Sequoias sitting in our garage (yes, we're trying to ruin the planet singlehandedly) and while I'm not driving the new one, I do get to drive my preferred car which will hopefully last another 5+ years now that we'll be putting less miles on it each year. And the kids think the third-row power seats and Bluetooth are pretty cool. Spoiled brats.
What do you think? Have you ever bought a new car? How did you negotiate the price? Any tips for readers? Comment below!
Love our Sequoias as well.
In 2003 we went to the only Toyota dealership that had one.
We wrote an offer told the salesman is was good until 3pm & never heard back.
We then bought the one we wanted 8 hours in NJ away but the savings we worth the drive.
At 180,000 miles we gave it to the youngest daughter who was then a D1 Soccer player in college. So the smell of 6- 8 sweating players & equipment pervaded the vehicle.
In fact it got so bad that when my husband took it to the dealership for a service the tech took him aside & commented that our dog definitely needed a bath.
Unfortunately both our 2003 & 2005 Sequoias had to be scrapped due to heavy frame rust & the rear window latches & windows kept rusting out & failing ‘constantly’.
My youngest now drives a 2016 Tundra that she paid for herself & I’m driving my husbands Ram until I decide on another SUV but at 90 lbs 4’11” blind spots are my biggest problem.
We had a few issues with the rear hatch stuff on our 05 as well. Hope it’s fixed in the 16!
Last time I bought a car I did the negotiations via email as well, which was amazing. My Chevy S10 pick-up truck luckily died in December (of 2010) so I got the prime time for dealers trying to get rid of their current year inventory. I had no need for a pick-up truck, only driving it since it was handed down, and had always wanted a Honda Civic as my next vehicle. I emailed 5 or 6 of the local Honda dealers to find out what was left of the 2010 Civics and the price they would offer. I then took the lowest offer and asked the other dealers that had some in stock to beat it. After going around a little, I chose one place that I was going to the next day and sent emails to the rest telling them that unless they beat it, I would be going to a competitor. That took a bit more off the price. Since I did not care about the color, I went with the dealer that gave the best offer, not caring about what was left in stock. Going to the place was a breeze. With looking at the car, a brief test drive, and signing the papers, we were only there for about an hour.
Two additional perks I realized by doing it over email:
1. I had proof of a written offer from a dealer to use for negotiations with the other ones. One place was playing hardball on it.
2. Since my first name is not a common name, it was not clear that I was female.
We did a similar process, sending “best out the door price” emails to dealers within an hour of our home. We were also looking at new 2012 models in January 2013, which gave some additional incentive for discounts. We got three groups of responses, tiny discount compared to list, moderate discounts (most responses), and one offer that was substantially below the moderate discount. We emailed or called the moderate discount offers and brought up the low offer and they confirmed that it was a great deal that they couldn’t match or compete with. The car was the dealers last 2012 model and they informed me that there were incentives to get rid of last years model. The purchase experience was much less stressful than previous used car negotiations as the price was already established, although it was an hour away. In the end, we ended up with a new car at below the Kelly Blue Book value of the same model with 20k miles on it.
My second post on my blog was about negotiating on a car using similar methods so I won’t rehash them here. However since email also played a role in that methodology I’ll throw out one piece of advice. If the dealer that is less convenient wins the bidding, get the dealership to give you something signed locking in the deal. I’ve had more then one dealer try to reopen negotiation at time of sale. I’ve done this quite a few times between friends and family, though only once personally.
I did this the last time I purchased a car, although I think the Costco price was the same as the “best price” I could receive via email, and was slightly better than the price quotes I got from the AAA program. It was so nice to be able to set exactly what I wanted and then go in and know what I was going to pay.
Keep in mind that since most dealers don’t have these cars on their lot, and will have to “trade” with other dealers to get the vehicle, the quotes you are getting are most likely all for the exact same car.
My last car was on hospice for a while so we had plenty of time to test drive new cars. We knew we wanted a blue Toyota, but when the time came it was right after the tsunami. The only car left that met our specifications was on a boat somewhere in the Pacific, but we got a good price using USAA’s negotiated deal (for us this was about $200 better than Costco’s) and the dealership grudgingly paid for a rental for a few weeks until the car arrived.
My wife just reminded me that we checked on the Costco price and did slightly better (about $200 less).
You never know what incentives dealers receive from their manufacturers. About 4 years ago, I was in the market for a Lexus CT200h. I was planning to use an EMAIL approach similar to WCI’s, but when I went to a local dealer to test drive they really pressured me to name a price. So I said I would pay $1,000 under factory invoice (which, from my research, I knew was on the “good/exceptional price” border). The sales manager magically produced a $1,000 manufacturer-to-dealer rebate certificate, and accepted my offer. This meant that, de facto, the dealer was receiving factory invoice for the car, and I was getting it at my price.
For those who want more information – google “fighting chance”, a service that gives consumers detailed, comprehensive information that helps them negotiate the best price. When it started, it was so powerful that, when the San Jose Mercury News ran an article about it, car dealers pulled their ads in protest. Now, with much more information available on the Internet, Fighting Chance’s “competitive advantage” is not as great as before, but it’s still worth considering. Among other things, it tells you what prices others have actually paid for the car you want – a more unbiased source of information on pricing. (Most of the public Web sites, such as KBB, are funded by dealers or the auto industry, so are not truly unbiased.)
Completely agree with negotiating away from dealership. My wife’s Subaru was negotiated over the course of two days and 4 phone calls. This had her in tears by the end because she ‘needed’ a car secondary to previous being totaled; luckily I was able to keep this information from the salesman and get a really good price.
Her car is now 6 years old with 80,000 miles, a spring chicken as far as Subaru’s go, but we are getting pressure from our CPA to buy a new car secondary to her buying into her practice via establishment of an S-corp. He states we can write off a large portion of vehicle as a work vehicle, but states we need to do this within a year of buyin… anyone know if there is a time limit on this deduction? Not really looking for a new car but if we can write off 2/3 of one and this offer expires, considering it. Any previous experience or input would be much appreciated!
Your CPA is pressuring you to buy a car? I’d get a new CPA!
Yes, there are some potential tax breaks, but it’s only a deal if you’d buy the car anyway.
I was thinking of getting a model 3 Tesla, any ideas how to negotiate or buy a better price one (when it comes out)
You’re joking right?
No, I thought people here would have experience buying model S, which I can transpose to model 3 when it comes out
I’m not sure how to post links in this reply but I’m pretty sure Elon Musk does not want his employees giving a discount. I think your best bet is getting one used if you want a price break.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/30/technology/tesla-elon-musk-discount/
You buy directly from the website, no dealerships or negotiations.
You might be able to get a discounted inventory car I’d you time it correctly. For example they were heavily discounting their current inventory cars as they just made a major Hardware announcement yesterday on their new cars
LOL – there are 400,000 preorders for the Tesla 3. Don’t expect a discount until 2025….
BUT – consider a Volt or a Leaf! I especially like the Volt. There are some amazing deals – especially if you live in CO or another state with strong state tax incentives.
https://radicalpersonalfinance.com/2017-chevy-volt/
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/10/04/so-i-bought-an-electric-car/
I used a slightly different but similar method when buying my wife’s car 4 years ago.
We didn’t know what small SUV we wanted at the time. So we went to multiple different brands to try out cars…Mazda, Honda, Ford, Nissan etc. Didn’t spend much time negotiating or talking price. Just tried to figure out which car she/we wanted. I told her she needed to narrow it down to two options and be happy with either one. She picked the two she liked best. #1 and #2.
I went to dealer #1 (they wouldn’t give me a price over the phone). They gave me a crappy price and a crappy trade in value for my truck.
I went to dealer #2 and told them I was looking at another car and already had an offer from them. Give me your best offer. I left and they called me with a much better offer on both.
My wife really preferred #1 so I went back to dealer #1 and said your offer sucks. Make it the best you can or I’m buying the other car with the better offer. He instantly came back with a $4,500 dollar improvement and I walked out the door with car #1.
Just like you state, you need to negotiate from a position of power or you will lose.
I love the “pick two cars you’d be happy with” strategy for managing spousal expectations!
I have purchased a few new cars (six over the last 26 years), most recently in January, 2015, for my wife (a Volvo XC 60). I do not believe that the free service and warranties require you to use the dealer that sold you the car (the company–Toyota–is on the hook for that), so it is less imperative to purchase the car from the preferred/closest dealer than you might believe.
http://www.carprousa.com/buying-from-one-car-dealer-servicing-at-another
As they say, “your milage may vary.” YMMV
Depending on the manufacturer, that is true! In 2012 I bought a Volvo C70 and really wanted a light blue exterior/cream interior and a CPO without navigation. Really picky for used inventory but living in Chicago, I figured there’s a lot of dealers. I also wasn’t pressed for time. I would see this combo coming up online and it would go the same day before I could get out of work and head over. I had family in Cincinnati who were going to be visiting in a couple weeks. I actually found one out there, negotiated the price (was already cheaper in the smaller market) and purchased the car by mail and phone. My brother did go in and check it out once to make sure it matched up with descriptions, and then came back a few days later to pick it up. Strangest experience for him to walk into a dealer and walk out with a car without paying anything, he says. He drove it up a week later on their planned trip. All my service has been done in Chicago!
They dont really negotiate, but depending on how horrible their cash burn is and need to post delivery numbers, their have been several “deals” available from time to time. The other thing to do is not custom make it but find the inventory model thats a closest match, but you wont have that with the 3 for a while.
However, unless you were a deposit holder, it will be several years before you even have a chance, even the deposit holders arent going to have one for a couple years.
thanks, I am a deposit holder but my number is around 250K. Thought I would wait a little before they iron out the kinks.
I looked at some current inventory (For S) and it was a hit or miss, some were cheaper and some way more expensive.
Wonder if it is possible to delay delivery/payment to end of a Tesla quarter to get a “deal”? is that possible?
My wife’s 2002 Honda Civic with 190k miles was not only a coupe, but beginning to have some serious issues. With a new baby on the way we decided the primary car should be a 5 door hatch for good gas mileage and we could take the kid and the dog easily. For serious adventures we have the crew cab truck. We went with the Subaru Impreza, but looking at 1-2 year old models we could only find ones with fancier options than we wanted and they were the same price as a new one with less options. I searched the online inventory of all the dealers within several hours as I was willing to drive. One not far away had exactly what we wanted so I emailed them and asked for the best price. I compared it to True Car and KBB as well and it was a good deal so we set up a time the next day to get it. I did take the Subaru 0.9% financing because I tend to look at such low rates as generally being less than inflation so I don’t mind the payment.
WCI – After Mister Money Mustache bought a Leaf – I thought you might follow suit! But it makes sense to leave your wife with a family car while you are pulling a boat with friends or whatever.
With your large income and bright future – no thoughts of a Tesla Model X? With fully autonomous driving announced two days ago – imagine getting in and pulling your boat to Lake Powell while you are working on the WCI website and letting the car drive itself!!! We live in amazing times!
I dont think the software will be reliable for 5 years, by that time, current X would be outdated in specs.
I just rode in an X last weekend. I did think about it, but couldn’t justify paying twice as much for a car that couldn’t do everything I wanted it to. The lack of range and inability to pull a boat were show stoppers.
I’m driving back from Powell now working on WCI stuff. My wife is driving! It turns out you only have about 2 hours of cell coverage on that 5 hour drive. Maybe I’ll get a sat phone and a solar charger and spend all of September down there one of these years.
I just called the dealerships directly and asked for the internet sales office because I didn’t want to wait for email replies. There were a few dealers who were kind of confrontational about me asking for their best offer and said they are trying to make a living. Not a showstopper, I just moved on to the next dealership. I’d get an offer from one and asked the next if they could beat it, and kept going from there. In the end I found a dealer who offered invoice price. I got my invoice estimate from Consumer Reports and I recall having to pay a small fee to get that info. This was 9+ years ago. All in all, it took me a couple of hours to find my car.
I found that the larger the dealership, the more likely they were willing to negotiate. I think this has to do with the car makers offering better incentives to dealers that have larger sales volume. Or maybe I just got lucky. I also didn’t allow the conversation to drift into financing until the sales price had been negotiated. They didn’t know when I showed up at the dealership that I was paying cash.
This all seemed daunting at first, maybe because as a single woman at the time, I thought the dealer would attempt to pull the wool over my eyes. But I did my homework and got lucky with a dealer who didn’t give me any trouble. He even admitted sales were slow that month (July).
The bigger dealerships do get better incentives from the manufacturer. They also have less tied up in each vehicle, overhead is a smaller portion of each sale, and it’s worthwhile for them to sell you a car even if they will only make a few hundred dollars at invoice whereas a lower volume dealer needs to squeeze more money per sale. And bigger dealers are just better at selling cars.
I like to avoid calling because then most salesmen you speak to will call you back and harass you until you tell them you’ve bought a car. Much easier to just delete emails 😀
I split the cost of my first used car with my father at age 17. Drove that car for 17 years until I was a young attending. Bought a second used car and drove it for 16 years until I was 50. All my “car payment” money I didn’t spend was saved, of course. I decided I was done with beaters and bought my first new car – ordered it from the factory b/c didn’t want to settle for what was on dealers lot. True Car works great for negotiating on factory orders as well, got a nearly exceptional price. If you want a manufacturers extended warranty (my average car lasts 16.5 years so far!) realize that dealers will compete for that too. I bought one out of state online b/c my dealer wanted too much; saved 30% on the warranty. The manufacturer doesn’t care where you buy your warranty.
You probably left money on the table even with 30% off the extended warranty cost. I compared prices for a fixed product (albeit with variable terms; a Toyota Platinum VSP for vehicles still under factory warranty terms when bought) and found there was well over 50% profit margin!
https://i.imgur.com/PDheIc0.png has the dirt, with the pricing specific for my wife’s vehicle. Note that the Seattle Toyota dealer wanted $2295 for a 5/60 plan whereas I ended up paying $734 for an 8/75 plan by having the semi-local dealer price match to the Kansas dealer. Again, this is comparing apples to apples, no 3rd parties in the mix or anything, and Toyota VSPs are good at any Toyota dealer…
Factory extended warranties are a commodity product that can be purchased at any dealer at any time from new until the factory comprehensive warranty runs out… and the profit margins are absolutely obscene.
Next time I will do better investigating the warranty – much less transparent than the auto price with the various car buying programs available. Perhaps the obscene profit margin could actually be helpful. As you negotiate the price of the car, mention that you also want to purchase the best extended warranty they offer. The dealer may give you an exceptional car price in order to recover it in the warranty profit margin. Worth a try.
“I gave them a $3K credit card deposit (couldn’t talk them into letting me make a larger one)”
I’m curious….why would you want to make a greater deposit? And why wouldn’t they accept it?
Probably, WCI gets CC points for paying it with CC, while dealerships dont want more CC due to fees they have to pay.
I put down as small a deposit as possible in case I had to walk away from the deal when I showed up. At that point I didn’t know if the dealer was sleazy or not.
I thought all car dealers were sleazy.
Exactly. The world of large credit card payments is a lot different than the world of $20-100 payments.
We just bought a “used” Nissan Altima a couple weeks ago, and they also said $3000 max for the credit card. We’re in Chicago. Actually it is a 2016 with 3000 miles on it. Was used by the dealer as a loaner service vehicle for customers. It gets the remainder of the 3 year warranty, but because it is “used” it also comes with the 7 year CPO on top of it – so 10 years total! And obviously price is lower than a 2016 “new” car because of the prior owner. We looked around at all the dealers in the area and found the best prices online at this dealer as a jumping off price, then did some further negotiations to bring it down lower.
Agree – Information is power. With various discussion boards, true car and access to everyone’s inventory, getting a fair price has become easier. The last three vehicle we have purchased over the last 10 years have all been new, with an experience similar to that described by WCI. I did finance one of those vehicles at 1.99%, and paid cash for the other two. I also experienced the $3k CC limit.
By far the best way to go is emailing several dealerships, really as many as you can bear. If you contact a dozen dealers, maybe five or six will give you a meaningful reply, and then two or three will actually be willing to negotiate. You can and should have the price you want negotiated before you walk in the door.
Personally I still haven’t ever bought a brand new car (because I’m a cheapskate) but I have helped negotiate for several family members. I also had a brief stint as a car salesman the summer after graduating high school. 😉
Car question for all you smart and savvy people: my husband totaled our 2007 Honda accord a few mos ago. It was fully paid off, so we didn’t carry collision insurance on it. It still runs fine, but requires a lot of body work on the front that costs about $8k. We didn’t want to spend that, so it has been sitting in our garage. We have a 2011 hyundai santa fe that I am now using, and since my husband works from home, we have decided to make do with one car for now. What can we do with the Accord other than take it to a scrap yard? It only has 80k+ miles on it. Thanks!
If you’re not driving it, I’d try to sell it. See what you can get for it. If you can get it’s value if it were fixed minus $8K, I’d take the money. If not, fix it and sell it. But what’s the point of taking up your garage with it.
+1 Get rid of it. You already lost the value when he wrecked it.
The longer it sits, the less it is worth.
Also, I don’t understand the connection between loan payoff and lack of collision coverage.
WCI, you stated in your article, “I wanted to buy the car from the dealership closest to my house, since the car comes with 2 years of maintenance and a 3-5 year warranty.”
I’m curious….could you not take your car to the nearest mfg dealership/service center regardless of where the vehicle was originally purchased? Or are you more concerned about establishing a relationship right from the get-go?
You’re right now that I look into it. Bear in mind I don’t spend a lot of time in dealerships/interacting with dealerships. Hopefully it’ll be another 5-10 years before we do it again.
I bought mine a couple states over, and there were no problems! (See post above)
Email seems to be the way to go, and that’s what we did also. Buying a new car isn’t as financially savvy as buying one a few years old, but the convenience and peace of mind can be worth it.
It depends on what you’re buying, but that is generally good advice. Certain products that hold their value particularly well don’t really offer an advantage to purchasing a few years old, such as many Toyota offerings, Honda, some Subarus, Jeep Wrangler, etc.
I also pitted rivals dealerships from neighboring towns against each other.
I had something lucky happen. When I was negotiating with the salesman someone came in and said a person just backed into the car we just finished test driving. I knew they didn’t have another one in that color so I immediately said “that’s unfortunate because I was planning to buy that exact car today.” I managed to get them to loan me a similar car for a week free of charge until they could get the same car from a dealership in another state and I got him to take $500 more off the price for “the hassle of making me wait.” So moral of the story is if you have a friend with a beater have them come to the dealership and help you out and split the profits. Just kidding.
Not clear what you yhink the relsationship is between dealer where yiu purchase and dealer where you service the car. Can”t you service the car at any dealer?
Probably now that I think about it. Good point. I think Toyota pays the dealership for it.
best bang for the buck, BUY CERTIFIED used car off lease