Tips for handling a car dealer

Any Tips?

It will be cash with no trade in - how much can you talk them down if the car is not already reduced?

I have been told to buy at the end of the month when they are trying to meet their sales targets.

by the neck


Always offer cash and you can pretty much beat them down as much as you like, its all up to the guy your dealing with though. Buying at the end of the month because of sales targets sounds like a good idea to me

is it realistic to think that you can beat them down around 3k?

i'm not trading in car so I would think that could help my case.

Realisitc? I'd expect it!

Depends on the price of the car as to how much you can bargain them down.

Have a look at some of the prices on here http://www.tedtracy.co.nz/
This place sells for window price only - strictly no bargaining. I have a vague memory of someone trying to bargain them down just $500 and they wouldn't budge so their prices are probably a reasonable indication of a car's value.

From memory you're spending less than $12k? 3k seems OK I guess but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "expected", depending on the dealer of course. Having said that I wouldn't approach a dealer that clearly had 3k already on the price - you'll notice on Autopoint that some dealers just have hugely inflated prices on the premise of bargaining come sale time.

So what I'm saying is that depending on the dealer your $12k car could have a window price of anything from $12k to $16k so you really just need to have an idea of what it's worth from sites like autopoint.

Big call dude, i know they don't bargin much at ted tracy's but they are also a frikin rip off.

Best bet is to find a type of car you like, shop around on what the common price is. Get an idea on what is being asked for them both private and on the lots.

The more research the better, the sales rep will pick up on it early and realise that you aren't messing around

Yeah in general 2 - 3k off a price would be normal, I've been into car dealerships where I knew the price on a car was way over inflated and asked what deal they'd give me for cash and they've said nothing so i've walked out and not gone back each and everytime, people who say no on obviously overinflated price obviously don't want the business or believe the car will sell to some poor unsuspecting person.

My Skyline was on sale for $26k (way overinflated but manual coupes were quite rare at the time) and I got him down to 22k, so not too bad even though you can get them for around $15k now, this was a few years ago for a 1996

Best advice is to find a car you want then do a lot of shopping around, get a good idea of what its worth then go and chat to them.

When we bought my partner's 4WD it was and still is a rare model.

It was on the lot for 24k and I talked him down to 17k cash no trade in.

My boy had gone in and looked and test drove but didnt want to pay 24k so he called me in.
I went in and picked out every single little fault on the vehicle and told the salesman how much it would cost to get them all up to scratch hehe.
I asked if for the inflated price they were asking, they would be happy to fix all those faults......he started bringing down the price.

Then I took it for a drive and pointed out all of the negtive points of things like the handling, the gearbox, the wheel size, the impracticality of it and I pointed these out to my boy......as if I was trying to talk the boy out of it.
Sure enough, the dealer pulled the price down a bit further.

Lastly, I said to the boy, well with everything I have seen, are you still interested?
He says "well, do you think its worth it?" to me......

And yup, yet again dealer butts in with "well.....the lowest I could go is $17....but that would be cash!!"

So I said to the boy "well, its your decision if you want it......"

and he wrote out a cheque

Heh, now thats a service you could rent out!

So true

The other thing is that at the moment there are literally NO cars being sold... The market is dead so they'll do anything to make a living...