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There Must Be A Pony In Here Somewhere
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Don’t believe the hype that all you have to do is walk into a U.S. car dealership and they’ll practically pay you to walk out with the car.
 |
AP Don't expect to be treated like a king when you go to the GM castle. |
After courting Honda dealerships for an Accord for weeks, getting every song in the car-salesman book, from a sermon mocking U.S. auto makers to a demand of “What’s in it for me?,” my husband and I bit the bullet and went to a General Motors dealership.
It was clear that Honda was the pretty girl at school and she wasn’t going to give us the time of day. If we wanted a date to this recession dance, we were going to have to go to a U.S. dealership and GM was going to be our best chance to score.
For sure, it was a risky move: If GM went out of business, we could be screwed. But the Chevy Malibu was rated top of its class and the possibility of a dirt-cheap deal made us salivate like hungry wolves at the scent of fresh meat.
We chose our strike date carefully: Easter Sunday.
We were the only ones at the dealership in the New York City borough of Queens, a stark contrast to the bustling Honda dealerships we'd visited. We let the salesman know that we had been around the block a few times and we were ready to make a deal—today.
He went to consult with his manager and came back with his best “Easter Sunday Special,” which was essentially the invoice price, and $2,000 more than the best price we got on a comparable Accord.
We asked about the Internet prices we’d found, which were also listed in that day’s newspaper and confirmed over the phone, that were $5,000 to $7,000 less than his so-called Easter special amid a slew of rebates.
The salesman whipped out a Sharpie and scribbled his price and the Internet price on a piece of paper, then listed all the charges—not rebates—that made up the difference, including two that appeared to be different ways of saying “destination charge.”
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes