just a rant

[wonderboy24]

i went to a car dealer i have bought 6 new cars from. went there today wife wants a suv again. year and a half ago we bought a 2017 impala from them 38,000. we have only put 6,500 miles on it. still looks like it did the day we bought it.they did a inspection on it and they freaked on the low mileage. got a call from the sales person i deal with. she said they will give me 18,000. for the car on a trade in. needless to say i hung up. why in the hell did it depreciate so bad in a year and a half. when we traded our 13 traverse in for the impala. they gave us 22,000 it only had 18,000 miles in 4 years.

 

[UNGN]

Nobody wants cars. When gas is $5/gallon, things will change, but nobody wants cars,

I paid $2.47 for gas yesterday. that is like paying $.85 in 1986 (and I think gas was $1.24 back then)

 

[Aaron L. Thomas]

These dealerships are a rip off. For starters... a couple years back my wife and I decided to pay a lease up front for the entire term and they tried to do everything in their powers to try and get us to pay monthly. I'm sure it's because they couldn't tack on that monthly interest, which is probably cutting them out somehow.

Needless to say we didn't do monthly and that worked so well for us that we decided to do it again for the next vehicle when the lease was up. The next dealer didn't give us any hassles with paying the lease up front but when the lease was over, we decided to buy it. Of course there was no depreciation there when we decided to buy it but that's not even the half of it...

We had already secured pre-approval from our credit union to buy the vehicle so again we outsmarted the finance company. We were under mileage and well maintained so you know they wanted it back to sell it to some unsuspecting buyer for more than what it's worth and or to get someone to finance it through their high interest finance company.

We didn't want to purchase or lease a new car so the salesman asked us to come in and take a look at some "nice quality certified pre-owned vehicles" we might be interested in. Every vehicle they had was overpriced and didn't compare to what we already had as far as bells and whistles. After finally getting through to him that we want to buy our current vehicle, he finally gave us the paperwork to give to our credit union.

Oh you thought it was over???? Nope... once we got the check from the credit union for the purchase price he wanted us to give the check to him so he can send it to the finance company. The credit union had already given us a pre-addressed envelop for the finance company so something didn't feel quite right. We called the finance company ourselves and asked what they would like for us to do and they said we can most certainly mail the check to them and it wouldn't be a problem at all.

Sorry to take over your rant but vehicles aren't getting any cheaper and these dealerships still try to squeeze us for even more money somehow. 😡

 

[fleming442]

I just can't see myself ever buying a brand, spanky, new car (or truck for that matter). Maybe I'm getting old and crusty (at 46), but nothing says "Oh, look! I HAVE to pay $1000 a month for THAT!" I'm sure that if I ever hit the lottery, that would change, but that's Fantasyland.

 

[UNGN]

I just can't see myself ever buying a brand, spanky, new car (or truck for that matter). Maybe I'm getting old and crusty (at 46), but nothing says "Oh, look! I HAVE to pay $1000 a month for THAT!" I'm sure that if I ever hit the lottery, that would change, but that's Fantasyland.

Carmakers know this and cars get better every year. But that also means that used cars get better every year.

As long as I can work on cars, I have vowed that my "daily driver" is going to be a car a paid $5K or less for and I fixed up. Of course this requires back ups for my backup car, and this completely PO's my wife, but that is my code.

I am trying to instill this into my young engineers, so I park my sub $5K cars in the first parking stall by the plant entrance. If they can't fix their own $2,500 car, who will trust them to fix someone else's $25 Million Jet engine? We start engineers at $75K right out of college (3X what I made), but if they invest the money they would spend on a new car in their 401K instead, they'll have an extra $200-400K in the bank when they retire.

 

[WanaBa442]

Two of my vehicles still run a points ignition..........
Have never paid over $8k for any vehicle I've ever owned (20 or so) and never would finance one either.
If the auto industry relied on guys like me, they'd be long gone.
Drink the Kool-Aid, buy new cars! Buy on credit! Low payments! Easy Terms!
What's a little debt and non-deductible interest between friends, right?

 

[a.graham52]

so i worked for a dealer for almost 10 years. i bought a hole sale piece off them. financed for 8k, florida car, solid, 160k yata yata yata. not even a year later went to trade it in, they would only give me 5.5k for it. hate to say it, i probably over paid in the first place, but solid awd car in maine was worth it, and its business, they need to make money off it. unfortunately ya know. another reason i drive older cheap cars. i buy a car for a grand, ill probably be able to sell for near a grand 2-3 years later as long as i take care of it. new car off the lot will loose its value the second it leaves the lot.

 

[69hurstolds]

This is why, when you buy new, you're going to want to "adopt" the car into the family. In other words......keep it a LONG time. Never know, although rare, it might be worth what you paid for it someday (even with inflation), and to me, that's a win. I tend to buy cars I love, regardless of price. I usually buy them and plan to keep them a good while. I do need to start driving them though. It's kind of silly not to, but hard to find time when there's a million other things on the list to do.

If you like driving new cars often and don't drive the wheels off them, then your best bet is to lease if possible. Like a 24 or 36 month lease, and get the ultra-low mile version if you don't put that many miles on it. Sure, you don't own it and you have perpetual payments, but you also don't take a 60%+ hit on the value when you're done and in a short amount of time, you're driving a new car again.

A good frame of mind if you do buy new, is that you know you're going to likely be shafted when you trade it in. If you're pre-lubed and ready to go, then buy something you can hold on to for a good long while.

 

[fleming442]

If you like driving new cars often and don't drive the wheels off them, then your best bet is to lease if possible. Like a 24 or 36 month lease, and get the ultra-low mile version if you don't put that many miles on it.

I think that's almost impossible around the Metro DC/Baltimore area. Most commute a good 30-50 miles one way. Personally, I'm at 100 round/day. That would destroy a Lease Agreement!

 

[motorheadmike]

In 2008 we bought our 2007 TBSS a year old, with a normal year's worth of mileage on it, for less than have of the original sticker price. Still have it, it has 134K miles/217K kms on it. It really has only ever needed basic maintenance - and the only trouble it has given us was due to me hot rodding it.

However, in 2015 we bought Natasha a brand new Colorado Z71 4x4 because it had exactly what we needed. The best part was our dollar was at par with the US, and car prices had equalized on both sides of the border. So even financed (talking $0 down, and 2.99% on a 7 year term) it is STILL cheaper than sticker on the same vehicle today. BAHahahhaaaaa! We are driving the wheels off this thing too (I think it has close to 90K miles on it now) - I cannot wait to jam a turbo on this thing once the drivetrain warranty expires.

My point is we'll probably never buy new again. I am still looking for a lightly used Hellcat.