lansbury

When I purchased a Jeep Grand Cherokee from them, the sticker price was $39,950. The main Jeep dealer I take it to get it serviced told me that the price from Chrysler to a dealer would have been normally around $36,000. I paid IA $32,500.

The discounted pricing comes from the manufacturer.

Michael

The dealer sort of lied to you since $36,000 would likely be the invoice price but then there are volume, promotional, and advertising discounts that isn't shown on the invoice.

Therefore with volume and promotional discounts, when supply is high, a large volume dealer may have paid $30,000 or less for the vehicle plus received a discount for advertising. Usually American manufacturers advertise the manufacturer's discount giving the dealer less flexibility to keep the discount without passing it on to the consumer but Japanese manufacturers usually don't.

RoadWarriorFromLP

The spread between invoice less incentives and MSRP on a car with a $40k sticker is unlikely to be anything close to $10,000. You can figure that the difference between invoice and MSRP is probably about 10-15%, and incentives and holdback probably would probably be a few grand at most.

My guess is that International Autosource gets a fleet discount, which means a different set of incentives from what normal retail buyers get. That's closer to the sort of price that a rental car company would pay for new inventory.

Invoice prices and incentives are available free online at Edmunds.

Michael

You are saying the same as what I am saying. You can call it a fleet discount but a large dealer also gets a large volume discount. Generally very large fleet discounts are only given to a company (ex. rental car companies, governments, etc.) that purchase all or most of their cars from one company.

Also if it is a year end model, generally those have a large discount to the dealer.

RoadWarriorFromLP

I'm not saying what you're saying. A car with a $40k sticker will almost surely not have a net cost of $30k -- the cost will be well above that -- and fleet discounts are not provided for retail sales.

Michael

I've purchased my Nissan 300ZX in 1991 for $6,000 below it $30,000 MSRP at a local dealer.

Unfortunately International AutoSource is not a publically traded company so it is hard to try to determine if it would even be eligible for fleet prices similar to rental car companies but unless they buy as many cars from one company that Hertz or Budget does, they won't likely get the same price.

Whether you want to call it volume or fleet discounts, that is a matter of semantics.

RoadWarriorFromLP

It's not a matter of semantics. The auto industry has specific "fleet" programs for qualfied "fleet" buyers. Not everyone can be a fleet buyer; there are requirements for having that designation for which you would not qualify as an individual.

It's misleading to suggest that it's normal to get a 25% discount from sticker. That's not typical, even for a good negotiator; there isn't that much of a spread in the invoice, and incentives are rarely that high.

Michael

You seem to be inferring that I said 25% is normal but I've never said that. In fact my 20% discount in my opinion, was very abnormal but at the time, I also could have purchased a corvette with a 20% discount. A few years later, I also purchased my son a Geo Prism (similar as a Toyota Corolla with both assembled in the NUMMI plant in Fremont) that was discounted over 25% but again that was not normal. My other son insisted on a Honda Civic CRX and every dealer wanted over MSRP and wouldn't negotiate downwards. Finally I went to a discount broker and he offered it for 6% under MSRP and got the car from one of the local dealers in exactly the color he wanted.

I also doubt that normally someone will get more than about a 6%-8% discount from International AutoSource unless there are dealer or customer incentives. However when landsbury purchased the Jeep, Chrysler may possibly have been having large financial issues and may have been giving out large dealer and/or customer incentives to move cars off the lots.

Pulaski

I don't think people are much if any discount at all buying from IA. I believe that IA is buying at a discount and/or with rebates of one sort or another, and selling "at par", which is where we started this line of discussion earlier in this thread.

Michael

I don't know how IA works but when I checked the internet several years ago, I couldn't find any great deals. I wonder if most work similar to the discount brokers of pre-internet days where they just sign contracts with dealers to provide cars to them at a certain price below MSRP.

When I bought the Honda CRX, all cars were selling for 6% below MSRP and all he did was call different dealers to see if they had one in the color that my son wanted and then told me it would be available the next day at his office.

Pulaski

You appear to have completely missed the point that the "great deal" that IA offers is that they will arrange finance at competitive rates for new immigrants when few alternative financing arrangements are available. I always wondered where IA made its money, though invested little time in thinking about it, but it makes sense that IA is making its profit from the discounts and rebates offered by manufacturers.

AdobePinon

What Pulaski says above is the main point with IA.

As for the rest of it, you have to decide what a vehicle is worth to you, and then get the best deal you can. The simplest (although tedious) way is to keep calling around until someone offers you the price you want. Or you can sit down and haggle, knowing your bottom line and ignoring all the crap the dealer puts in the middle. There's not a lot of point to worrying about the details of how the price is broken down. If you get lucky, you find a dealer who needs the sale more than they need your money. Patience. Stick to your plan.

MidAtlantic

But how do you know you have the best deal? That is why I used TrueCar (I think Edmonds also has a similar system). I went to my local Toyota Dealer with a crazy low price from TrueCar of about 18% discount from MRSP and simply said if you match it I will buy, if not thank you and goodbye. I had a deal at the price within 10 minutes. It was end of year so maybe I struck lucky because they needed to make their numbers for the month/year.

AdobePinon

And that's one way of knowing. :-) It's the details that are unimportant.

hungryhorace

+1 to this, though the powertrain transmission is utter junk. Get a manual if you can.