Car buying....can you negotiate with Toyota?

[froglady]

My next door neighbor's family owned a car dealership, so he grew up working every aspect of car sales/service. He buys all of my cars for me. I do the research and he goes in to close the deal.

 

[Tink&SquirtsMom]

I don't know about where you are from but in CA Toyota corp gives dealers a 1.5% kickback for every car they sell. So that means their cost is actually 1.5% UNDER the invoice price. Knowing that it is quite possible to buy a Toyota under KBB invoice price. However, owning a Corolla and a Sienna I will say it is harder to get good deals on the Corolla.

If the dealership isn't dealing, walk away and find one that will. We find that online is a much better way to go.

If you have ever previously owned a Toyota call corporate (number on Toyota.com) and ask for down payment assistance as a return customer. Sometimes they will give you $500-$1500 to put towards your downpayment. I got that tip off a Sienna discussion board and numerous people had success with it. I didn't personally do this as I came onto this tip AFTER I bought my second Toyota (isn't that always the way). I believe they said the best way to get it was to say you are considering buying a Honda or Toyota and what will Toyota do to help sway your decision?

 

[Dopey Sharon]

I bought my Corolla last year. I researched, online, various sites before I went. I got a price from edmunds.com, maybe, that had prices that others were paying in my area. I printed it out and took it with me.

The first dealership I went to, in my town, came close to that price. I tried negotiating and was told, by the salesman, that "look outside...does that sign say "Goodwill or Toyota"! I was shocked, to say the least! I got up, started walking out, and the manager stopped me. I guess the steam coming from my ears was a sign that I was pissed! I preceded to tell him, in front of all the other customers, that he should have a talk with his salespeople on what not to say to their customers. He tried to settle me down and make a deal, but, at that point, unless they were going to give me the car, I wasn't buying it there.

I went to another dealership from there. They were a little higher than the price I got off the website. I told him the price I got, they honored it, and I bought the car.

So, yes, you can negotiate a Corolla.

You don't know how much I wanted to drive to the first dealership, in my new Corolla, and say..."Remember me? I'm the Goodwill Girl...Big mistake...big mistake"! But I didn't.

Good luck!

 

[Christine]

Just a "heads up" on edmunds.com and kbb.com.

When I bought my Highlander last year, I started with these sites to get a good price. What I found when I went to the dealer was that they were all too happy to "give" me the edmunds price. In fact, one dealership sat me down, hooked me up to the internet, and pulled up edmunds and kbb prices for me and said they will give them to me. It was then that I felt that maybe the edmunds price wasn't the best.

It then became my goal to come in under the edmunds price. Which I did. I did internet pricing through 4 Toyota dealerships and one of them was able to offer a great price.

 

[Tink&SquirtsMom]

It then became my goal to come in under the edmunds price.

Are you referring to MSRP or Invoice price?

 

[GJM]

We purchased our Honda Accord one year on New Years Day, we got such a great deal because they were having some sort of year end contest and needed to sell a car. We later purchased a Honda Civic, DH called the same dealer and told him what we wanted and the price we wanted to pay, when DH told him the price we paid for the Accord he didn't believe it and looked it up. We got the Civic at the price we wanted.

We have only purchased Toyota's or Honda. Right now we still have our Accord with over 100,000 miles and we purchased a Highlander about 2 years ago. My first new car was a 1987 Toyota Celica - I loved that car - I started having problems with it when it had 160,000 miles and then we got a new car.

 

[Christine]

Are you referring to MSRP or Invoice price?

Edmunds give you a "fair" market price for what people in your area are paying. It's what they say you should pay for the car. I think it is above invoice but below MSRP.

 

[debbiedoo]

any other websites out there besides Edmunds.com to look into??

 

[kydisneyfans]

We received 6% off the price of a Saturn-who does not usually lower prices-because it was New Years Eve and they were due to pay tax on inventory the next day. the manager said that he would rather give the customer the 6% than the state.

One thing to look at is if the dealer has a guarantee or buyback program. Saturn gives 30 days or 1500 miles-if you don't like it-return it for a full refund. My car had 1,488 miles on it with a sticker of $15,500--I got it for $9,295--over 40% off the sticker for a car that was driven for a month.

Now that we live in a HUGE Toyota town-where the Camry plant employs over 7,000--we will look into Toyota when car shopping. Toyota can be bashed by the American autoworkers all they want-but the fact is Toyota employs many people here in the states, and supports the towns they have plants in. Everything from the july 4th fireworks to high school basketball tournaments are sponsored by Toyota here.

 

[puffkin]

****Update******

We were about to give up on the Corolla, they just weren't coming down quite far enough for us. However, one of the dealerships I emailed said they could beat our lowest price so we gave it one more shot with low expectations.

They did beat the other price, but it was still approx. $1000 off of where we needed to be. They basically wouldn't come any lower and we told them that we knew it was a long shot, but we just couldn't afford it now. Maybe in the summer we would come back. As we get up to leave, the manager comes running in and says do we have a trade, that maybe we could work something out on that end (we hadn't mentioned a trade yet). We basically knew what we could get for the truck, but we said he could run the numbers. Well, he came in approx. $1000 more than we had hoped to get for the truck so it brought the price down to exactly what we needed it to be. (We hadn't told them what our price was that we needed, so it was kind of like an omen.....)

They tried to push us to close the deal, but we didn't like the color of the car they had in stock with the features we wanted (white or mint green) so we basically said we would like to get the car, but we aren't happy with the colors. The sales manager practically ran back to his office to see if they could get us the same car in another color through a trade, and it looks like they could.....so we told him we would sleep on it and call him back tomorrow (today). Then we talked financing, and he gave us a pretty good rate, but I told him I needed to check around.

So, we have a call in, they are trying to locate a car in our first choice of color (we basically like 5 of the available colors, however the two they had weren't any of those). I was calling banks this morning and got a really good rate. The manager is going to see if their finance guy can beat or match it....so hopefully we can get a slightly lower rate. It would be easier just to go through the dealership.....

Anyway, thanks for all the tips and help. I feel like we got a pretty good deal on exactly what we wanted. Hopefully they find the car we want....