Hi Everyone!

I'm new here but recently fell in LOVE with the RDX. I haven't been car shopping in quite sometime so I was unaware of how far the 3rd generation of RDX has come.

I'm thinking of buying a 2019 RDX A-Spec with 1,500 miles for 40K.

My question to you is A.) Is it worth it (reliability is my main concern)? and B.) Should I opt for a 2020 or a 2021 instead so that some of the problems with the 2019 are buttoned up?

Best,

 

Is it AWD or FWD? I think price is a bit steep given that 2021's are out. You should be getting a minimum of 20% off the then MSRP including the destination charge. Also are you buying from 3rd party or from dealer?

The 2019 RDX has several issues many of which have TSBs to address them. But a minority of folks report issues like popping sounds from the sunroof, squeaky brakes, infotainment glitches, transmission glitches, etc. for which there is no fix. The 2020/2021 are virtually identical except they come with the TSBs applied.

 

It is AWD...That's what I was thinking but I wasn't sure because the mileage was so low and the cars are pretty much identical. I'm buying from a dealer but the dealership is one of those "one price, one person, one hour" types of places & don't have any room for negotiation (no dealer fees or destination charges because it is a Subaru dealership). They are a respected dealership but that's just from the reviews I've read on Google.

Another piece of information that I will throw in here is that I am going to be trading in my 2009 Cadillac EXT. It came from the salt belt and has major rust underneath the truck. I also learned that while I was talking to the dealer about trading in my truck towards the RDX, that the odometer has been rolled back....I got royally screwed as the last dealer rolled back the mileage by about 45,000 miles. The dealership has an "as is" lot and offered to give me 10K for the truck which I honestly think is great, with all the troubles it has. I just don't know if another dealership will give me $10K trade in for this truck without an "As Is" lot.

Here is the link to the car: https://www.carfax.com/vehicle/5J8TC2H64KL042599

 

Check the RDX prices thread to see what people are paying for new ones.

Have you checked Carmax for selling your current car? I would highly recommend getting a quote from them.

Then you can factor in (fair price - carmax) vs (dealer price - dealer tradein) and decide what is better.

Based on the link looks like a tradein. I would definitely want at least 20% off, if not 25% to consider it to be a good price.

 

Awesome! Thank you, I will take a peak over on the RDX prices thread and check out Carmax as well.

The 2019 RDX was a Trade-in, so not sure why someone would only drive it 1500 miles? I guess there could be lots of reasons why someone only drives a car 1500 miles but that also caught my attention.

I really appreciate the help and hopefully I can become an RDX owner soon.

 

Keep shopping and screw no-haggle dealers. My advice: Acura's simple trims makes it very easy to get competing offers, since all A-Specs are the same other than color. Much easier than, say, BMW or Jeep where it's nearly impossible to find two cars with the exact same feature set.

I had great luck this past weekend going to TrueCar and filling out the form to have dealers within X miles send you offers. I got some surprisingly aggressive offers out of the gate - right now I have two east coast dealers down to $40k for a 2021. I literally took screenshots of the texts and sent them between dealers. Very fast, no phone calls. Good timing with end of month quotas coming up.

As for differences, there's another recent thread about that. Bottom line is that you shouldn't expect any noticeable differences between 2019-2021 aside from the white paint color change.

 

Whole bunch of reasons, but it's possible that they bought one of the cars sitting on the dealers lot towards the end of 2020 and then didn't get to drive much because of the pandemic. Now want something cheaper or better, etc.

 

Seems like a terrible deal, most people have been getting 20% off MSRP on 2020 RDXs.

 

Very Bad deal, my 2020 aspec one year ago cost 44k.

 

Same. I made a bunch of phone calls and went with the dealer who gave me the best price. Took only a few short minutes. For reference, I got my 2020 a-spec a month ago for $39k. The sticker was about $47k. Brand new and had 6 miles on the odometer when I picked it up. There’s definitely deals to be had out there.