Can't say you need a hubby. I went along with ex-Mrs Tele when she was car shopping recently and while I poked around the car a bit and hammered the salesman a bit more on the price, she was obviously the buyer and the salesman directed his attention to her. This was true of all the dealerships we visited.
Car price = sticker price price of options + stamp duty + rego charge dealer delivery - discount.
Sticker price includes GST and 35% luxury car tax if applicable.
Stamp duty varies from state to state. In WA it's a rip off 6%. Infact I gave the government a total of over $16,000 when I bought a car last year, which pleased me no end.
I can't say it's a black art at all. Depending on the type of car you buy, the dealer exhibits varying levels of pushiness or cluelessness. Holden and Ford and quite pushy and clueless, only they tried the "what can I do to get you to buy this car today" crapola. Mazda/Subaru/Renault etc take things in their stride and are polite and reasonably knowledgeable. If you go up to Beemer or Merc land, they are quite friendly, as they should be if you are handing over the price of 4 Corollas. All of 'em give you free capuccinos these days.
Definitely ask for a discount. If you are buying a big gas guzzling car like a Falcodore, ask for a massive discount. Say 20% (you won't get that but it's a good starting point).
What are you buying anyway? How about a nice convertible? Peugeot convertibles even come with a free baby seat!!!!!
Actually between buying a house and car last year, I've stumped up close to $40,000 in stamp duty to the WA Office of State Revenue. (the $16,000 above was included LCT and GST, not just stamp duty).
I seem to remember that stamp duty was one of the state taxes which were almost going to be dropped when the GST came in, except that the GST was originally going to apply to everything including food. Once the GST on food was dropped, everyone decided to keep stamp duty. Stamp duty on an average house is about $20,000. This means you would have to buy about $200,000 worth of food before you were behind the stamp duty on buying a single average house. Thanks Democrats for opposing GST on food.
no 9 I am SURe you must mean sexIST I have never seen an attractive man working in one of these places
In my experience (and that of other female friends) I agree that car dealerships are extremely sexist. A few years ago when I was looking to buy my first car in Melbourne, I went with my uncle to a couple of places. Most places, even though my uncle made it clear that I was the one buying, and that he was only along as my driver, the salesman wasn't interested in talking to me, but to my uncle. At one place, the guy was so patronising that when I asked about the specs, he said it had 16 cylinders!! (Mitsubishi Mirage) I insisted on seeing the specs, and when he brought them out, he walked straight past me even though I had my hand out waiting for them, and gave them to my uncle. He then came back to me and condescendingly suggested that I choose a colour. Needless to say, I walked out immediately. I should have filed a complaint, but I was so angry I just wanted to get out of there.
A lot of the time salesmen won't take women seriously, so it's not such a bad idea to take the man along - some of my friends have reported getting better deals at the same dealership when with their partner than when they went alone, even though they were the decision-makers both times.
#14 - LOL - absolutely a typo or maybe a seniors moment - don't think I know one sexy car salesman - a lot of them are just plain lazy sods.
evening star...I've checked out the auctions but like you said, they tend to be bigger cars. We don't want a "falcadore", but a largish 4 cyl like an Astra, Civic, Focus, Elantra or a Tiida.
I saw that V8's are practically been given away. Like a 2004 Calais for 23K??? I can't even get a good 2004 Honda for that price.
Jehane...you have just backed up what Sugoi has said and brought my nightmare to reality.
Tele- to be honest, I'm not that fussed on the fords or holdens, so perhaps I may strike a decent salesperson? Your order of how it works...you say I need to negotuate the discount AFTER all of that stuff? I was planning on doing ...
car price = sticker price options - discount SD, DD, rego
Rather than go for % off, I was going for $$ off. is this done? If % is used, is 10% a reasonable figure to settle on, given we've started at 20%
(Actually, I've just done some sums and it seems like even with my $$ off strategy, its worked out to a discount of around 10%)
Actually I've found that once you actually sit down and start going through the price of the car, the advertised price you see in the newspaper etc, goes out the window. They lump the base price+stamp duty etc together in a contract so it is easy to see the final price. It doesn't matter how you get the discount, just ask for it.
When ex-Mrs Tele bought the Subaru, she went in about 6pm on a Wednesday (the only night car dealers open late in Perth). There was a lot of tooing-and-froing..... but it was almost going home time and if they didn't give her an even bigger discount than they orginally intended, she would have gone home to think about it. As they say 90% of something is better than 100% of nothing, so Mrs Tele got a good discount for signing the contract on the day.
So, you may consider:
- when you actually intend to buy it, go in about 1.5 hours before closing time. They may give you a bigger discount so you don't go home to think about it.
- buy at the end of the month, they may want to up their monthly quota (note though, they may measure their quota by deliveries rather than signed contracts; if you have to wait 2 weeks for them to find a car and get it ready, this won't work).
- work out beforehand exactly which options you want. The most common one is automatic tranny at about $2,000. But some makes charge extra for floor mats, metallic paint or mudflaps. Note if you want car seat covers, a lot of new cars have thorax airbags mounted in the seats, so either you can't use seat covers or you have to get special airbag compatible seat covers. Mudflaps and floor mats cost nothing to make so get them to throw them in for free.
If you do get a clueless or rude salesman, you will know within about 3 minutes, so just go to a different dealer. That said, between Mrs Tele and myself buying a car each, we visited all the mainstream dealers except the Koreans plus some of the luxo-dealers. Only 1 or 2 of the salesmen were clueless, the majority were OK.
Yes, end of month can be a good time. We joke that we bought our Lancer for my husband's birthday, Sept 29th, it was just coincidence, we'd been looking and test driving for weeks. However, I remember the salesman asking if we signed the papers that day, the 29th, could we be back with a bank cheque on the 30th, when the car would be ready. That was the clincher for a very good deal.
Wow - great advice..cheers!
Our only prob will be that theres only 1 dealership for each brand in canberra and we don't want to have to travel to sydney. I suppose we could use the same scenario though - but play dealer off with other model's dealers. I hae my preferences but to honest, it doesn't matter as they are all much of a muchness in this class of car.
The only extra I will pay for is paint... it seems you pay 300 extra if you want any other colour except white...
Will try the end of month trick and just see...
Actually I think I was wrong about the 20% discount advice thing. The only type of car you could get a 20% discount on is a gas-guzzler which is not what you are shopping for.
20% is unrealistic even as a starting point for an Astra etc esp if there is only one dealer in town. Just use whatever negotiating strategy you feel comfortable with.
Just remember though, a Peugeot 206 convertible is only $32K with a folding metal roof and a baby seat.... (I'm serious, they really do give you a baby seat!).
trusted partner
