Sometime soon the price hikes will have to start rippling through to the rec price for cars.
Euro/£ has gone by 15%, the $£ is now not near the levels it was 12 months ago, steel prices (certainly in China) have gone up by 15%, oil prices.........., wage inflation in Eastern Europe,..........
I suspect that prices will have to go up, but maufacturers special deals will kick in if there is surplus stock. There will be an optimum time to buy, but the question is how soon?
pmh2
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Its a bit like the old MFI con they have a year long sale they just change its name (i.e spring to summer to autumn etc) with a little gap between to make it seem they are totally different
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Thanks for all the feedback.
I'm thinking, if sales are slow now, even with the pre-Sept 30th deals out there, then they'll only get slower should discounts disappear and list prices rise up. So what happens then? Either dealers close down or they HAVE to price the cars to sell.
I'm not going to be swayed by the 30th Sept deadline and will hold on a while longer.
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Good for you SM. Ideally you need to wait for third week in December (pray for rain or snow on the day you choose to go) then hit them between the eyes with an offer they will not refuse. Could even go so far as to take some finance to help them along. Do not however forget to utilise the cancellation clauses in the HP agreement within the time specified. You will not be welcome at that particular dealer again so make sure the warranties are convenient with other outlets for the marque you intend to buy.
Happy Bargaining at the right time with a desperate salesman who sees his targets disappearing over the horizon.
Phil I
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Sulphur man,
I'm bound to ask, respectfully, are you buying a deal or a car?
Buy the car when you need/want it.
Wait by all means, if that's what you want to do, but don't get too bound up in the deal.
You may end up with something you don't want at a price you didn't want to pay.
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Oh a car of course. As stated in my header post, its for wife and child, not I. Main requirements are safety, ease of access, auto gearbox, good visibility and reasonable economy, though that's not a priority. After numerous car tests it's come down the X-Trail diesel auto - of which there's plenty of 6-12 month examples across the Nissan network. It's defintely the car that fits my wife's requirements best, and I enjoyed driving it too - it's comfortable and leisurely to drive with lots of standard kit and few gimmicks, plus and an impressive gearbox.
So no question that it's the car we want, i'm just fascinated by this whole 30th September dealer ultimatum. Will they just not bother making good deals on Oct 1st? I think in the present economic climate the idea of sales targets is probably a bit, well, broken.
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could someone explain the significance of the 30th september deadline please?
i'm taking delivery of a touran next week, should i phone tomorrow and ask to hold of reg-ing it until the 1st? [confused]
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If it is of any help, we bought a Nissan X-trail on a 54 plate which had been used by someone at HQ. We first saw it at the end of September, when it was 5 months old, and were told roughly the same as you have been. We were taking our time finding the right car (I was really enjoying testing various cars as suggested by others on this forum!) and saw the same car was on the forecourt of the Nissan Garage at the end of November. We went in and asked what they would do if they did not sell it soon and were told it was going to auction the following week. We checked what the same model was fetching at auction and offered a figure slightly lower - pointing out they would save money on taking it auction and on commission.
We took delivery the first week of December.
We also bought a 54 Micra at the same time - the joint deal was actually only marginally higher that the forecourt price had been on the X-trail alone in September.
Very happy salesman and very happy customer.
Edited by deepwith on 25/09/2008 at 22:00
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I used to work in a dealers selling new cars so can easily explain the significance of this important date.
The manufacturers set a target of say 100 new registrations in September.
Dealer hits 100% or more of target and he gets a £100,000 bonus.
Dealer hits 80% of target and he gets an £80,000 bonus
Dealer hits 79% of target and he gets a £40,000 bonus
Obviously the figures above are made simple for ease of understanding, but it shows that certainly at the place I worked, getting 80% of target was a necessity. We used to sell cars at break even point and even at a loss, we'd even use all the finance commission to lower the monthly payments if we thought it would get a deal. It was more profitable to sell a few cars at a loss than lose lots of bonus. (we did once miss 80% by 1 sale though, and it was one that I could have made but the idiot junior manager wouldn't give me a poxy £200 discount because he thought he was the big guy, oh how I laughed...)
So you can probably understand why dealers will snap your hand off to sell before month end, but may not be so keen to do the same deal on 1st October. We told a fair few what they could do with their order when they came trudging back in October having had a think about it. It seems they didn't understand what "a deal for today only" meant despite our best efforts to put it in baby talk. All done politely of course. :-)
For those who are wondering, the profit on many, many new sales was in the low hundreds, used cars was where the saes profit was, new was only good for bonuses.
Edited by Blue {P} on 25/09/2008 at 22:08
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aah thanks blue, I can sleep easy tonight!
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Blue, you remind me of what Homer Simpson once said - "I give you lots of money, you give me shiny car"
Edited by Pugugly on 25/09/2008 at 22:29
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funnily, that's pretty much what I said!
Edited by valmiki on 25/09/2008 at 22:50
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(we did once miss 80% by 1 sale though
Does the car have to be registered to count as a sale? Just wondering if, in practice, the cut-off date is a few days short of month-end, especially if finance is involved?
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Always has to be registered in the month to count.
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what Lucas said, must be registered, fortunately there was no need to have the car delivered to do that, many a time we registered cars that were barely in the country never mind at the dealership. :)
Now, as for the Homer Simpson comment, maybe I'm drunk (ok, there's no maybe about it) but I can't figure out if that's a compliment or an insult!! :-D
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Oh actually wait, I just got it.
People - Absolut vodka is not something to put in your shopping basket when you know you will spend 99 out of the next 100 nights in the house on your own, please, shop responsibly and only buy it before a party where it will all get drunk in a social setting rather than a Bridget Jones Chaka Khan situation. ;-)
(Yes, I spent a while making sure there were no drunken spelling mistakes in this!)
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I was always led to believe that you should negotiate at the end of the month as this is when the best deals can be had.
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I was always led to believe that you should negotiate at the end of the month as this is when the best deals can be had.
That was the point of my question - how fine can it be cut? No point in going in on the last day of the month if there's no time to get the car registered (and maybe finance has to be approved first too?).
It's obviously also critical how close the dealership is to those all important targets - if they're already over, or miles under, then they won't really be bothered.
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If all you are interested in is the lowest price and you dont complicate things with a p/x the internet brokers/wholesalers will always win,but of course people like the comfort of a local dealer.
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I bought my car at the end of march. The spec I wanted was 'in stock' , so they could deliver in a week and before the end of the month. Blue has posted exactly what I was told. The car was sold at a loss, but they more than recouped it though bonuses.
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