Car dealers are coming off a very soft month for sales (October 2009) so buying a car early in the month should provide you with better than normal negotiating opportunities. Your local car dealer is DESPERATE to sell cars! Go in with my car buying program (available at www.autoinsidertips.om) and you’ll have the salesperson eating out of your hand!
Ally Bank is a financial institution created from the old GMAC. They are an internet based bank that has been trying to gain market-share by offering better interest rates than the competition. Now, starting October 1, 2009 they will be making a strong push to get car dealers to finance their customers through their bank.
So, based on their business principle you should assume nothing but the best rate possible from an Ally loan. This is where you need to be careful; Ally is giving big incentives to dealers. Dealers will want to put that money in their pocket. If your dealer tells you that Ally will be your lending institution ask what the rates are from other banks. Do not be surprised if their response is, “another bank has the same rate as Ally…” but you get a silly reason to do business with Ally like, “but Ally is better to work with.” That’s nonsense. At this point you should pressure the dealership to give you a better rate. Tell them you are aware of Ally Banks incentives and as the one who’s going to be making the payments, you feel you should share in their incentives. Mention that you can take your lending out of their dealership completely and that you understand that this will cost them money. Be strong here and save money.
I recently read a story about a car dealership in Albuquerque, NM, Zangara Dodge and the owner of this dealership was described as running a car dealer ‘Ponzi Scheme’. The New Mexico Attorney General is collecting information to attempt to convict Ken Zanaga, Zangara Dodge’s owner. His lots are empty and I doubt if he will ever be able to sell cars again, but the full extent of the damage he has caused is still not known.
The ‘Ponzi Scheme’ Mr. Zangara was involved in is the age-old dealer scam of not paying off a customer’s trade-in. Regular readers of this blog know that this is a dealer scam that I have begged you to be wary of for a long, long time. Now that it may become known as the auto dealer ponzi scheme I hope people will learn about this common scam and be smart enough to make sure that their trade-in’s bank is paid off after they buy a car.
I recently read about a car dealership in Denison, TX , Hoyte Dodge who had about 100 cars damaged in a hail storm. The dealership will probably receive a great insurance check for the damage. This makes these cars a GREAT buy as long as you, the customer know that the dealership needs to significantly discount these cars!
As our government considers another bailout for GM and Chrysler it is understandable that so many people are upset. Both companies are in their current situations due to decades of mismanagement and why should anyone feel sorry for overpaid corporate stooges. I agree.
But there are people around the country, working in car dealerships who are losing their jobs and you should feel for these people. In 2009 hundreds of car dealerships, many of them domestic dealerships, will close their doors putting a lot of hard-working people on the unemployment line. These are the people you should feel sorry for, not the corporate big-wigs, not the dealer principles, but the porters, mechanics, lot guys, hardworking people who will often lose their jobs with little or no advanced notice.
It’s the last day of March and there is a bit of optimism in the air! Car dealers who have weathered the tough 6 months in anyone’s memory have a bit of a bounce in their step because for many March will be the best month of the year. Sure there are still a plethora of potential problems in front of a car dealer, especially if they sell a domestic brand, but it sure is nice to see the needle moving up!
This makes today an outstanding time to buy a car. If you are negotiating for a car now, push hard TODAY for your price and you stand an excellent chance to get it!
Attention hybrid shoppers, March 31, 2009 marks your last chance to take advantage of the $3,400 tax credit the government offers. Starting April 1, 2009 and until the end of September the hybrid tax credit is cut in half (only $1,700). Then it is cut in half again until the end of March 2010. So if you are thinking about buying a hybrid NOW is the time!
Everything you read or hear today that pertains to the auto industry is negative and entails sales declining, jobs lost, money lost, etc. Well, there is one segment of the auto industry that is booming, Buy Here, Pay Here dealerships. BHPH dealers self finance (or use special finance companies) used cars for people. A friend of mine who gave back the shingle of a new car runs a BHPH and he is making a fortune! At a BHPH dealership often times you will make your car payments at the dealership. With so many people having trouble getting financed for a car at a conventional dealership a BHPH dealership is a great alternative.
A man in Alberta Canada went into a Ford dealership and began smashing his vehicle into several new trucks. In fact, he did so much damage 3 trucks had to be totaled! This man received a fine, 3 months in jail and 3 months of probation for his actions. I have not been able to find out what his motive was for this crime, but I can speculate: was he an owner of a Ford HD diesel truck, these trucks have had a terrible series of mechanical problems? The Ford HD diesels have had so many problems I’ve heard of people driving them back to the dealership and just walk away from them, I guess that’s better than smashing into one! Or did he feel wronged by the dealership? None of can be sure, but if someone does the proper research, and then goes about buying their next car in the right way, there’s much less of a chance of them wanting to go back to the dealership and smash up some inventory! Buy smart, I’ll show you the way!
Sure tough economic times mean that people in the repo business are doing well. But I bet it is odd for even the busiest repo man to go and repossess cars from a new car dealer. Well that’s exactly what happened in Chicago the other day. Infiniti Gold Coast Luxury Motors had 14 Infinitis repossessed the other day by the manufacturer.
This was not a normal situation! My guess is these were vehicles the dealer felt they could no longer sell. You see, virtually all dealers have their inventory on floor plan. Floor plan allows the dealer to have a much larger inventory because instead of buying the cars on their lot they take a loan and pay only an interest charge each month on their cars until one is sold, and then they pay off the vehicle.
The dealership is still open for business so I would assume that the 14 vehicles (most were SUVs) were very old cars that the dealership simply could not sell. So they may have thought that if they believed that the vehicles would never sell… why continue to pay the interest each month? You see the manufacturers force vehicles on the dealerships and in these tough times it is not impossible to imagine that some of them might not sell. Now I doubt this dealer sold any of the repo’d cars and kept the money, but in today’s tough economic times it is not something that is out of the realm of possibility!
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