For those of you that have had alot of experiences buying and selling cars, have you ever been able to go into a dealership to purchase a new car and treat your trade-in and new car purchase as a separate transaction? Meaning the dealer doesn't take something away from one transaction if they give you something on the other transaction.

 

Most dealer use a 4 square method of firguring out the deal... One square is the new car, another is the trade in....

You can negotiate any way you want, but they are still gonna "play" with the numbers...

Just tell them you want XXX dollars for your trade in, and YYY dollars for the new car (KBB value for trade in and $500 over invoice for example).

 

I was told that this was the best method of dealing with dealers regarding trades. I found it really difficult to deal with them as separate transactions when I bought my most recent car. I found the easiest way to deal with the whole process is to negotiate the price of the new car and get a number both you and the dealership agree on that is approved by the GM, then tell them that you are going to trade in your current car. You still risk them screwing you on the trade but you know that you are getting a "fair" deal on the new car.

 

The real way you should handle a trade-in is to not care about it. Make the deal you want on the car you want. Make the deal, get it in writing, then at the end say, AND I have a trade in. But you can't think youre going to dicker on the price. Either you want what'll they give you or not.

The idea is put in them into a position where they can't play with the numbers.

 

It almost impossible to get them not to play with the numbers. The standard practice is to negotiate the price on the new car and bring up the trade later (tell them you're going to sell it privately). Later, after you get their best price on the new car, mention that you'd like to see what they'd be willing to give you for your trade. Since they know what the price on the new car is, they usually lowball you on the trade (which they would do anyways if you mention up front you want to trade in).

You just can't win with the dealers, but you can do better then some people that just walk in and pay MSRP. Just have to spend the time to go to a couple of dealers and find out which ones want to work with you. Some people have gotten good results emailing the local internet sales managers from several dealerships and telling them to bid for your business. Lowest bid wins.

My brother did it an interesting way... He had a 03 Tacoma and wanted a 05 Tacoma. He knew what he wanted the numbers to be... He wanted the new truck for only 9K out of pocket.

It didn't matter if they gave him 12K for his trade in and 21K for the new truck, or 14K for his trade in and 23K for the truck... as long as it only cost him 9k...

The dealer wrote up the 2nd scenerio. I think they did it that way to mess up the averages on websites that report "what others are paying" (like edmunds TMV).

 

Thanks for the responses!! In my experience, the dealer takes back the negotiated price of the new car when I bring up the trade-in at the end of the negotiation. They are like, "oh, no...now we have to restructure the deal." Which I think is b.s. but that's business. I only say this b/c when I traded my 6 month old 2004 TSX for a 2005 TL, that's what they did to me. I was in a situation where I owed just a little bit less than what the car would sell for in an ideal private party purchase. Plus Acura owned my loan (I had 2 vehicle payments on my credit report). It would have been very difficult for me to purchase a new car (the one that I wanted) with those payments on my credit report with any other dealer. If I bought from them, I would pay less on the sales tax. I probably should have researched more and waited rather than going in to see what they would offer and end up purchasing (like going to carmax or another acura dealer). But since I bought one vehicle from them, I figure that they would give me a good deal for loyalty.

I made the classic rookie mistake of giving them the key to my TSX to "appraise" it. If it have 600 miles less, they could have resold the car as "new." Then they played the let's wear them down game (got there at 4pm and didn't leave til after they closed). The second mistake was that I didn't do this transaction online (like I did the TSX, which I think that they gave me such a good deal on it and are now trying to recover). It's been almost a year since I've made the deal, but I kick myself in the ass all the time thinking how I let myself do all the things that I knew I shouldn't have.

I got low 20K for trade-in on a 6 month old TSX with 6600miles on it and around 32K for 05 TL with Navi/Auto so my residual owed on the TSX was around 4K. After rolling everything in...it ended up around 38K. At the time I was okay with the numbers, but every now and again, I think I could have done better.

Live and learn I guess.