Help Buying a new car

C

cincyhorn

100+ Posts
I live in Austin and need a new car.

Does anyone know if Chevy is selling cars below their "you get it for our price" price. I'm interested in a new car, however the employee price is still slightly over what the family budget will allow.

Any buying tips to get the best sales price and the best trade deal is appreciated.

CH
 
Negotiate for a better deal if you insist on buying new.

But as the poster above said, buy used if possible. You save a LOT of money. Of course I did the opposite of what I preach, but try getting a stick shift family sedan w/ low mileage.
 
I'll echo the comments on buying used. Save a ton of cash, and get a certified pre-owned under 20K miles. Don't fall into the trap of "It's only $249/month, and another $39 for the sports package." That is precisely what the dealers want you to think. Pay cash if at all possible, otherwise, get the shortest loan you can afford.

I would suggest autotrader and the newspaper. Don't get in a hurry.
 
Terrible time of the year to buy new.

Wait until Sept-Oct-Nov and get a yearly closeout model....rebates & discounts will be ALOT better. Watch the newspaper ads closely. Start a "folder" with all your car research. kbb.com, consumer reports, and edmunds.com will give you the exact selling value of a car. Dealers HATE to see informed consumers coming with the folder.

Also, remember to NEVER tell them how much you want your monthly payment to be and DO NOT finance thru the dealer. Get pre-approved thru a bank to minimize your finance rate. Use an online calculator to figure out yourself what you can handle each month.

Never tell them that you love a certain vehicle and "that's the one I want." Have 2-3 cars in mind from difference dealers and make those ******* work against each other. Just keep saying, "HHHmmm, I don't know." Remember, if your not happy....just walk away. Never sign ANYTHING until you are happy.

Following these steps, I bought my 2004 Dodge Dakota for $16,900 when it had a sticker price of $25,400. If your going to buy a domestic vehicle, then you should be about to get them to come down 4-5-6K off the sticker price since domestics are grossly overpriced. Foreigns (Hondas/Toyotas) are a different story and I've had a harder time getting them to come down.
 
My contracts professor gave us a great tip. Find the Wholesale price. Get a cashiers check for that amount including any options you want. Go the the dealer with the check. They aren't going to put up much of a fight. They still make money, and you get the cheapest new car possible. However, I recommend buying a used car, an Accord, Camary, or other Honda/Acura model. (NOT NISSAN!)
 
Sigh. Another GM hater without any particular proof. Take a look at JD Power's Vehicle Dependability Survey for 05, it was released this week.

As for other tips,

- if you trade, never trade at the dealership you're going to buy from. They'll pinch you on the new price, the trade in, or your financing.

- good luck finding wholesale prices (reliably). You can usually get the invoice price from a couple of sources, but dealers are given volume discounts and a variety of other breaks they can pass on to you, so if you walked into a chevy dealer right now with a check for invoice, you'd be getting ROYALLY screwed.

- Buy used like everyone else said, and whilst preaching, I also recommend selling your current ride to a private party.

- Buy dealer inventory if you find what you want - they want to move those piles of cavaliers or whatever that are just sitting there taking up space.

- Try to find the supply in days (this is hard to find) for certain vehicles. They always shoot for 60 days, and if you can usually gauge how willing they are to deal by how far over that 60 they are. If they're under 60, good luck - you wont get a deal.

- Consider financing elsewhere just to make sure they have one less avenue to pinch you.

- Dont buy extended warrantys at the point of sale

- read your contract when getting ready to sign and question ALL fees. I trimmed 300-400 out of my last car purchase because of extraneous **** they added.

- dont buy any protectants or sealers - it's called "mop and glow" and is soley used to inflate dealer's profit

- search online forums for the car you want to buy and learn who the good dealerships are. Additionally, you may find sales people who come highly recommended.

- if buying new, consider looking in person, and by contacting the internet sales manager - he's usually the fleet guy too, so he can deal and generally they dont push the same ******** the floor vultures do.
 
The GM haters need to take a look at the JD power dependability study. Mechanically speaking, GM makes good vehicles especially for the price. Of the 19 car/truck segments, GM vehicles rated #1 is 8 segments. this was for initial quality, but rather for 2002 cars/trucks.

jd power

Here's my experience with current GM promo.

The GM employee price is around 3-4% below invoice price. The rebate is then subtracted from this price. The price you see on gmbuypower.com is the price including the rebate. Prior to purchasing my vehicle I was pre-approved at my credit union. I was quoted 4.69 @ 60 months

The purchase of the vehicle was very easy since you dont negotiate on the price. The dealer gave me a print out which included msrp, invoice and GMS price. This price matched what I found on gmbuypower. The only fees I paid were for title, license and 2 misc fees. I paid gms price, minus rebate, plus sales tax and about $250 in licensing/title/misc fees.

The dealer was even able to get a interest rate at 4.4% through my same credit union. I was approved at the lowest advertised rate but the dealer was able to get a lower rate through the same credit union. If you find a dealer you like they can trade cars with other local dealers if they dont have what you want on their lot.
 
f buying a used car with less than 20k miles. if you work a dealer hard enough, you're better off getting a car with 20 miles that is new.

as for working dealers, this is what you do. go to edmunds.com's forums and check out the buying experiences/prices paid section. see what people have been buying these cars for and get an idea of what you want to pay. go the dealer's sites and get quotes from as many as you can. then, have them outbid each other.

no pressure, no hassles... you are in control.
 
Thanks for all the input. I found out that they are in fact going below the employee price. Here's an email I received this morning when I asked if they still had the vehicle that I'm interested in buying. Do you think it is appropriate for me to forward the email to other dealers to see who can do better?? Should I removed the dealer name?

"Yes. I still have the vehicle.

And for today only, I can give you an additional discount of $1,000 as we are closing out the month on June 30th.

Your Total Price $36,984 + TTL .

$1,000 UNDER GMS EMPLOYEE PRICE AND FREE EXTENDED WARRANTY TODAY ONLY!!

NO CHARGE OIL CHANGES FOR LIFE PROGRAM ALSO IN PLACE...

AND ADDITIONAL REBATES UP TO $3,000 OFF GMS PRICE MAKES IT A GREAT DAY TO BUY A NEW CAR.

Please stop by today and take a look."
 
Know what you want but be willing to walk away if they don't give you want. I almost bought a Tahoe. We were in there on a Saturday and dealer said for us to take it home while they finished up the paperwork. I get a call on Tuesday saying they were done with the paperwork But were not able to give us the 4.5 interest rate we had agreed to. They could only get us 6.9 because we(well he was) were first time car buyers. I promptly drove back to the dealership and gave them the keys to their Tahoe. They tried to tell us 6.9 was good because some people walkout of their at over 10.0. I said "well they're stupid" and walked out. Turned out for the best I got a Nissan Armada instead. I told Nissan the price and interest rate I wanted. I told them I would be there the next morning to buy the truck if they had the price I wanted and if not I would continue my drive to Corpus where they were going to give me what I wanted. Sure enough showed up at 9am with everything I asked for. I got my Armada 6k off sticker and cheaper than the Tahoe.
 
Figure out what car you want, then get the email address to salepeople at 3 competing dealerships and then play each one off each other.

Trust me they will start dropping their price once they know you are seriously talking to competing dealerships. Also, end of month late afternoon/night right before closing is a good timeto buy a car. All delaerships/salesmen have quotas to meet.
 
Spanker, if you have bad experience with Chevys, say you had a bad experience with your Chevys. To say that all GM vehicles are **** is a huge generalization that doesn't appear to be true according to industry watchers, and likely wouldn't apply to other vehicle lines, or even other vehicles. Maybe your Colorado rolled off the line on a Friday afternoon. Either that or it could've been built on a Monday morning...

It's not that I have a jonesing for all things made by the General - it's more or less just irritation that a lot of people judge an entire manufacturer by one sampling. One dude may get the world's most dependable car while the one rolling off behind it could've been the outlier and is constantly in the shop.
 
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