Car Dealer Ads
Will I be able to buy a car for the price quoted in a dealers ad?
A dealer ad generally is composed of one or two vehicles which are known as lost leaders that have a very aggressive or special low price. Obviously that's to get you in the door but then quite often you find that particular vehicle has already been sold or is of a specification not good enough or not what you're looking for. So when you see a vehicle priced very low in an ad you may be able to get that price. The dealer can't advertise illegitimate pricing. You might find that vehicle is not meeting your needs and then the dealer has sales people there to step you into vehicles which are higher priced but may better suit your needs.
What does an auto dealer ad mean by "0 percent financing"?
Zero percent financing refers to a special program generally sponsored by the manufacturer, the actual builder of the vehicle, to incentivize you to purchase the vehicle at a very low out-of-pocket cost. It'll be anywhere between 24 to 36 months in general. What it is basically saying is, for that particular time, you're only paying the actual transaction price of the vehicle, broken out over 36 months, with no additional interest charges placed on top. Zero percent financing programs are usually very successful, and they're used as an incentive to push new sales. The only caveat on this is that, in order to get that special financing rate, you usually need to have very high credit scores as well. It's a very select group of buyers actually do qualify for that. But generally, if they have a zero percent financing program going on for Tier 2 and Tier 3 credit risks, they'll also have a low financing rate, maybe a 4.9 or a 5.9. So yeah, obviously if you're borrowing money, you want to pay as little in interest as possible and so zero percent is an attractive option.
What does a dealer ad mean by "Don't make a 5000 mistake"?
When understanding car ads, when you see “don't make a 5000 mistake” in an ad from a dealer he's kind of beating his chest and saying that he's got the best deals in town. Quite often, especially on the new car side, the pricing and the profit structure doesn't change from dealer to dealer within a certain brand. All dealers are going to be able to sell the same vehicle at a similar price, so “don't make a 5000 mistake” is just really a way of getting your interest, of making you stand up and pay attention to that dealer. This is the ultimate requirement or necessity for advertising in the first place.
What does a car dealer ad mean by "4000 for any trade in"?
The thing to consider when you hear any sort of a blanket statement about trade-in value like that is there is a very good chance that the dealer is going to inflate the cost of the vehicle to cover anything that he's going to give you on trade-in. There is no such thing as a free lunch, especially in a car dealership, so it's pretty difficult for a dealer to make a statement such as, "I'll give you $4000, for a vehicle" if maybe the vehicle is in its last legs and might only be worth $1000. You can rest assured that the dealer is going to pump up the price of the vehicle or hold you at a high standard in negotiations to keep the up the price there to allow him to give you this "special" trade-in value.
What do "asking price" and "or best offer" mean?
When you see "asking price" or the term "OBO", or "or best offer", basically that's the seller telling you that he or she is willing to deal, that the price that they've stated there in the ad is not necessarily firm, that there's room for negotiation.
