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Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences Nissan Altima Prices Paid & Buying Experience
2422 messages, Last post on Dec 01, 2009 at 12:34 PM
You are in the Prices Paid: Buying & Leasing Experiences Forum. Your Hosts are car_man & kyfdx
By the way, the price I paid was about 3% over invoice with the options I purchased. I would be interested to know where the 10-15% under invoice plus holdback figure came from. I've never seen that on any of the advice/research pages on here. Again, happy shopping!
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...which might not be worth much...  Dealers are adapting to us "net savy" people who know what they paid and think a "$250 over invoice" deal is a good bargain... The Result: They now include "Dealer Advertising" fees, and a bunch of other stuff in the invoice, so now when you go there and say "I will only pay $250 more than Invoice!" they are more than happy to say "OK!".
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Paid 27,012 for a 2002 Altima SE with everything except the Xenon headlights, leather and winter package. That was sticker price, but i got 11,824 for my 1999 Camry LE V6 5-speed in trade. True trade in value would have been about 10,300. SO a $1500 discount off sticker price. It was a locate so we'll see if they actually deliver. This is the second contract i've signed in 2 weeks. the first was for a Maxima... that a different dealer couldn't locate for me... I'm getting the silver with black interior... can't wait! |
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After looking in two states, WA & OR, finally found the one we've been looking for - Sheer Silver 3.5 SE, 5 spd. This car has leather, heated seats & outside mirrors, ABS & side airbags, sunroof, spoiler, floor mats & splash guards. Interestingly, the car came from Canada so they had to retrofit the speedo and put the spoiler on. The car still has daytime running lights and a engine block heater hookup. The dealer wanted $28,790 - I offered $25,700. He countered with $26,890 and I came back with a final offer of $26,000 with no other fees - just tax & license. And he accepted. The total time to make the deal and sign papers was just a little over an hour. What do you think? |
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| I think this came up in another thread, but the reason you were able to get such a good price on your Altima is that is came from Canada, where the pricing is much lower than it is here. I think a loaded 3.5SE comes in at something like 21-22k in American dollars. Congrats on getting a great deal! | |
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I paid $500 over invoice on my Altima SL. I checked Edmunds' price (dealer vs MSRP) based on the car I was considering. I still feel "used" -- didn't challenge the doc fee, so they pretty much got that money back. Shoulda, woulda, coulda... I still love my ride, though! |
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| On a 3.5 SE V6 Altima, the dealer showed me his "invoice" of $21,046 that matched the Edmunds invoice, but he added a "MA" fee of $400 which he said Nissan charges the dealership. It is for advertising in the Atlanta area. So he said invoice price was $21,046 plus the $400. This really throws off my figures. He offered to take off the $609 holdback, but then he wanted to add another $289 to the drive-out fee "to pay the people upstairs in the office." I didn't argue, but I didn't write a check either. What's negotiable? (I've read www.carbuyingtips.com, but this MA fee is not mentioned.) | |
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kcb2, Be aware! I live in "south" Metro Atlanta and we checked out several Nissan dealers. Each one told us a different story about fees. One dealer is having a $1 over invoice sale and even showed us his "invoice"..funny thing is, it was still $500 more expensive than the dealer we ended up buying from. Someone once told me that a car can have several "invoices" so which one was he showing you?? We bought the Velvet Beige with ABS Brakes/Side airbag. The dealer ordered it from out of state but it was here the next morning. We figured we saved $2500 overall with the automatic trans, ABS, sunroof, foglights, splash guards, wind deflector, microfilter and floor mats. |
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Hi Squirrel11, We are in the south metro Atl area also. Where did you end up buying? Do you know exactly what you paid, ie., invoice + destination charge + advertising fee + profit?) Would you recommend the dealer? You did well to find ABS. Seems like no one is carrying it in the Southeast. One dealer located a car in Florida with ABS for me. I have been debating about whether to insist on ABS. On shopping for a good price, I may try faxing to several dealerships to see what kind of offers I get. I would be interested to know exactly what you paid. $2500 under MSRP is hard to figure since I am working up from the invoice pricing. If you would rather email me directly, my email is berryfield  juno.com Thanks, kcb2
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Some one wanted to know what we paid ($25k) and how. Read "Don't Get Taken Every Time", by Remar Sutton. It describes the whole dog-fight you go through when you walk in the door of the dealer, and shows you how to get past every single line they'll throw at you. Your library should have a copy.And it actually became fun, turning the tables and taking control of a deal. We started out defining the kind of car we wanted. We decided a four-door sedan, with "medium" car size and some luxuries was what we wanted, looked at 2002 Altima Camry, two Mazdas, the Accord and Civic. Our second limit was what kind of payment we were comfortable with, and for how long. We sat down and figured out what 3, 4, and 5 years of payments would buy us, and that gave us a ballpark for how much we would borrow. Then, we put what down payment we could afford on top of that and that gave us our ceiling for the car's price. We almost forgot the sales tax, which would have been a near-$1500 surprise, but when figuring that in, we knew what we wanted, and what we could afford. Doing the money plan up front gave us a tremendous advantage. Next, we went to the web, Kelly, Edmunds, and Consumer Report. At CR, we bought the New Car Price Report ($12 I think) , which listed the bottom line price, what the dealer would get in kickbacks, any rebates and holdbacks, and stuff that they'd try to stick us with. This saved us the most money, and separated the real dealers from the fleecers. You mentioned the Advertising Fee. It's $400. You can ignore it, if you know how. Same with the $1000 "acid-rain" overcoat, and the $400 undercoating, and all the other stuff on the sticker price. How? CR report lists the basic price of the car, and the price of every package, both the dealer's Invoice Price, and the MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price, which is 15% to 25% higher than the IP). We put together a handwritten list, with the base price and dealer holdback, the shipping charge ($540 - tough to bargain away), and the Invoice Price of every package we wanted, and the total. That page (we made a copy for ourselves, in case the original "vanished" at the manager's desk)was whatwe handed the salesman. It was Our Offer. There was no Ad Fee or other fluff on it. Sometimes, the salesman would just laugh and pull a number out of his hat and write it down as a counter-offer. Our total came to about $22,250. One guy said he'd go "$1000 over invoice" and wrote "$24,000" as the "invoice" price. We walked. Another guy brought over a bad copy of a "Dealer Invoice", which had the package prices right, but the base price was out in left field, and wound up being $500 over our best offer. We walked. At the dealer we bought from, we got a counter-offer with a matching base price, but the MSRP on all the packages. We argued a little, but it was our best offer so far, and we told them so. We also told them we had another dealer to see, and left. They probably expected to never see us again. We took their offer and tried to bargain against another dealer, who was having a "$1 over invoice" sale. He had the car we wanted, but the wrong price, and something didn't feel right, so we left. We went back to the other dealer that day, instead of waiting until the next morning, and started to put the deal together. The dealer had thought we wanted a diff color which had been sold by the time we got back. He did find our color, but a couple of extra features that he wanted MSRP price for. Not a lot of money, but we knew our choices and timeframe were getting slim. No trade-in. Financed with credit union which had simple-interest loans, which saved about $2000 in interest, versus APR at the same rate. So the deal was pretty simple, and we didn't lose money on shell-games. We did pay a $500 "Transfer Fee", which we saw for $400 at another Nissan dealer, so you might want to try to negotiate that, and we did get "nickel-and-dimed" a little, paying MSRP for the packages, but all in all, we saved about $2500 on their advertised sticker price, and even beat the "$1 over invoice" price. Taxes and everything worked out to be a little over $25k. One week and I love it! First long trip tomorrow!! |
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