I get asked this on occasion, so I thought that in my effort to
provide you with a guide to buy a car with this website, I would
give you some food for thought on how good a deal you can get buying
a demo car.
First of all, I don’t believe anyone gets a good deal when buying
a dealer demo car.
Oh, sure the car dealer will probably be willing to discount the
car a couple thousand dollars from the MSRP.
Initially you might think why would this not be a good deal.
Well, first of all if you have been around this website just a bit,
I would hope that you would feel confident enough that you could get
at least a couple grand off of the MSRP without having to buy a demo
vehicle that probably has in the neighborhood of 5,000 miles and
could be 6 months old or older.
The bottom line with dealer demo cars is that they are used cars.
Period.
The dealer will not refer to them as such but they are. But this
in and of itself isn’t the more difficult problem. The problem is
that at the time that these demo’s are turned over there is no book
market value yet available to be able to really determine what a
fair price is for the vehicle.
If you are indeed considering a demo vehicle you could, for
instance, use .15 cents a mile like is used in leasing.
But you would also have to take into consideration what sort of
depreciation hit you are will to take on the car. Any car is going
to drop a few thousand dollars the minute you sign the papers on.
So, how much depreciation should you consider has hit the car when
it has around 5,000 miles on it?
A couple thousand dollar discount Mr. Cardealer?
I’m afraid you’ll have to do much better than that. So, before
you get all excited about a dealer knocking off a couple thousand
for you on a demo car that you are considering, do some math.
If you still (for whatever reason) are leaning toward buying that
car, do yourself a favor and run a report on the vehicle. Also, make
sure that the dealer has performed all of the recommended
maintenance on the car … and starts you off with a completely new
service of the vehicle.
In summary, you’re better off rolling up your sleeves and
negotiating your own car deal on a non-demo new car.
As you know by now, having all the facts at your disposal is a
key ingredient in getting your best car deal and not knowing the
price point that you should begin at on a demo vehicle puts you at a
disadvantage.
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