About two years ago we saw the Honda HRV announcement. A brand new model for the states, with promising MPG numbers. I just knew. I told my husband, "In two years when we can buy it used, we're getting one."
He chuckled and just shook his head, like he does most of the time when I have a crazy idea.
But I wasn't kidding. Over the course of time, we looked at the features, read reviews, and eventually test drove one. The test drive was the make it or break it. And in our case, we fell in love. Okay, so maybe I fell in love and my husband just agreed.
But used ones were rare and far away. And not cheep. My plan was failing us.
No one was trading them in. And in our area, the 2016 models were sitting on the lot right along side the 2017 models. A strange turn of events in my master plan.
Our house buying master plan for was postponed, I was craving a bigger vehicle,and our jobs changed for the better. In addition,we calculated the savings of fully financing a new car and paying off some newlywed/medical debt we had with the cash from selling my current car. Financially, the new car financing rates were so low, it made more sense than credit card interest we were trying to get ahead of. (See below for how it feels)
Crazy right? Saving money each month by buying a new car! This idea came to me in the middle of the night in case you were wondering.
Before we knew it, our used HRV shopping turned into haggling the price on a 2016 sitting on the lot with spiderwebs. The price we were quoted after 3 hours of haggling was impressive. And they agreed to include all weather mats throughout. But I didn't want to settle for the manual transmission they wanted to give us. So we walked away. But we walked away armed with information, including an offer of 0.9% financing through Honda.
I did what any cheapskate would do. And I went to other local Honda dealerships with this information, asking directly "Can you beat this price?". All but one flat out told me "No."
(Side story: I'm so cheep I haggled someone from $5 to $4 on a table at a garage sale this weekend. The value of this antique table is $300.) Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
But alas, the rival local dealership said "we will do whatever it takes to earn your business."
My favorite words. Because at that moment, I called the shots.
In a matter of minutes we agreed on a 2017, in the Purple I wanted, in an automatic, with all weather mats, and window tint, for the same price the other dealership offered us a 2016 for.
Considering this was the ONLY purple one left in the state, the first dealership threw their hands up (OK so maybe I just imagined that) and said "we can't beat that offer."
A few hours later we were at the dealership "to talk to them in person and not buy."
Famous last words, I know. But hey... enough answered prayers in one day means we were 100% confident in the decision we made to go through with the purchase that night.
If you hold out long enough and are stubborn enough about what you want to pay, you have a good change of getting to that point.
We were in no rush to buy it, and because of that we didn't feel the pressure to jump.
Check out my sisters post for a whole list of great tips we used!
http://veganrunnermommy.blogspot.com/2016/10/me-vs-dealership-how-to-get-best-price.html
Oh and yes, my MPG is actually exceeding the posted. We have gotten up to 37 MPG, but are averaging 33. Updates will continue, as we are only 600 miles in :)
