So here’s a little (heh) story of what my Toyota car buying experiences have been like.
Three years ago, I bought a 2013 4WD Double Cab Long Bed SR5 Tacoma. I originally started looking in December 2012, but didn’t end up buying one until March of 2013. One learning experience here is that the end of year sales are a real thing. I could have saved an extra $530 if I had taken an offer shown to me in December, that I never saw equaled over the next few months. Unfortunately, I had just started the process, and didn’t yet have a feel for what exactly was a good price.
When I finally decided to pull the trigger in March, I started off emailing 10 dealers in the Houston area for quotes. My benchmark was the out the door number of $29,875 which was shown to me in December. This embedded truck price was 11% under the straight up $31,475 of the vehicle sticker. This is what was on the truck:
Base Tacoma – 28,185
SR5 Option – 1,630
Towing Package - 650
Floor Mats – 165
Destination – 845
Total MSRP - 31,475
Emailing all of the different dealers basically didn’t get me much. They kept showing me prices 1,000’s of dollars higher with all of the dealer crap on them that I didn’t want. I finally went into the dealership of the lowest of the bad prices, and asked him to order the above and offered a no negotiation price of $30,500 OTD (28,500 for the truck, 1.0625% taxes, and 125 for TTL). The 28,500 was a 9.5% discount from sticker MSRP. We did the deal, I waited two weeks for delivery, and I still love my Tacoma as much as ever.
Jump ahead to this week, and my wonderful teen aged daughter has totaled my wife’s SUV, so I’m back in the market this weekend for a new vehicle. I decided to go with the 2016 2WD 4Runner SR5 Premium. (To be truthful, I wanted the base SR5, but my wife felt it was worth it to pay an extra 2,000 so she could park her caboose on fake pleather and have a sun roof that will one day leak and cause me an extra 1,000 in repair bills….but I digress)
So I grab the old spreadsheet, plug in the 4Runner and get the following:
2WD SR5 Premium – 36,490
Destination – 900
Regional Ad Fee (I know…) – 60
Rebates – (750)
Total MSRP – 36,700
A big point here is that I don’t need anything at all beyond the base SR5 Premium.
I applied the previously experienced 9% MSRP discount add 1.0625% tax and 125 TTL and my target is $35,600. As I really needed to get something done this weekend, I bumped it to 8% for a nice even $36,000 bid. I call up 10 dealers in the area, and they show me offers mainly in the 38,000 – 42,000 range, with two around 37,500. Not getting anywhere on the phone, I jump in the car and begin the Odyssey.
First dealer I go to, I tell them I’d like to order a base SR5 Premium, don’t care when it comes in, and I’m firm at 36,000. They try the stalling tactics, back and forth with the manager, and finally won’t show anything better than 38K something for one of their inventory which is loaded up with dealer crap. So, on to the next….
Second dealer, I tell them the same thing, but I raise the bid to 36,200. Guy says they’ll go 37,500, but that’s it. (This also happened to be the same dealer I ordered my Tacoma at)
Third dealer I sit down at, I raise the b
id to 36,500. Again, they only want to talk about local inventory priced much higher. They don’t even show a price.
The fourth dealer is where I originally did all of my test driving, and I really like and have a good rapport with the sales agent. I up the bid to 36,800. He brings the sales manager out and they refuse. Talks about how he’d be losing money, no one’s going to do a deal at a loss, yada yada yada. Again, no one will consider ordering me a base SUV, and they only want to talk about local inventory. At this point I’m really confused. I’m positive there is an extra 1,000 of margin in this for them if they will just order me the SUV I want.
I go home for dinner thinking it’s time to buy a Honda Pilot. It’s while eating that I notice one of the 10 dealers had sent me decent pricing on a base SR5, but hadn’t responded when I asked for the Premium pricing also. I give him a call at 8:00. Same spiel, “I would like to order a SR5 Premium with no dealer adds and I’m willing to pay 36,800.” He offers to sell me the color I want, with a bunch of dealer adds I don’t need, but at my 36,800. I’m like ok………
An hour later, I’m 60 miles away buying the SUV from the nicest, most knowledgeable sales agent I’ve run across. The SUV came with the following add-ons:
Premium Mats – 325
Aluminum Running Boards – 599
Cargo Net – 50
Roof Rack Cross Bars – 185
Cargo Cover - 155
That’s an additional 1,314 on the MSRP. Granted, I don’t think the cost on all of that is more than 300-400, but still…..if the fourth dealer had just ordered me the car I wanted, that would have been another 300-400 in free margin to him.
And guess what, the embedded SUV price of 34,517 is 9.2% off the sticker MSRP. This tells me my original 35,600 OTD price for the base SR5 Premium is accurate, but none of them could be asked to do it unless they also got to overcharge me for a bunch of useless dealer adds. While I get that all companies want to sell higher margin add-ons, you would think that one of the first dealers would have gone for less money is better than no money.
Any who, that’s my experience, hope someone gains something from it.
