1994-2002 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Bear in mind that a new model is a few months away, so I don't see incentives/deals/whatever on these vehicles become anything but more attractive... I would say 5-10% below MSRP is not a bad target in the circumstances, but maybe I'm unreasonable... with regard to the many posts regarding dealerships, ethics, microeconomics, etc. I am the first person to ask myself the question, if I was on the other side of the fence, would I want to be in that business getting paid whatever $ for doing whatever it was? And I don't mean just selling or maintaining cars. Sometimes the answer surprises me, because increasingly often, it's 'no'... Apart from the things which I enjoy doing to my car (so they are not so much work), about the only thing that I am not prepared to pay somebody to do is work to my house, because for what works out to $100/hr I would rather do the job myself... but I ask myself for $200 is it worth spending what amounts to ten hours to detail and wax my car? only because I like to do it. It is the same with the dealer, and I could not agree more with what Brian said about the meager markup on automobiles, especially new ones. Used ones can be a whole other issue (I know a Toyota dealership allowed $8,000 trade-in on a car it sold for $13,000. It did nothing to the car other than a safety check and change the fluids, and put it in the lot for a couple of weeks. The car was traded by the sales managers parents, so I doubt they got anything other than the best possible allowance any customer would have got.) Personally, I doubt that many SAAB dealers are making $5k on a used car they sell for $13k. While I'm the first one to gag at the spreads often quoted between wholesale and retail on used vehicles, I appreciate the overhead involved in operating a dealership. My only gripe is the gazillions wasted on advertising, especially on the small print 'stock number 12345' type ads - you know, the one that had a beautiful shade of turquoise, vinyl seats, a four speed transmission and no a/c. This is an area of where I think the retail section of the industry had got out of control, and of course now that one guy does it, everybody else must follow. Personally, I will read column classifieds, even if they are from a dealer, but I never read the screaming, '$5,000 below invioice, 200 models to choose from' full page ads... maybe that's just me. But I realize that getting agreement on SALT was easier than getting competing dealers to agree on this one. I've always thought too that beating the last few hundred bucks out of the deal is probably not money well spent, because it leaves very little goodwill on the table...
If anybody is still reading this, congratulations on your perseverance.
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
