Two-Five Sti-L Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 Currently I'm having a HARD time deciding what to do w/my car situation and I basically have 2 choices: I currently own a 01' Honda Prelude, modified quite a bit. Been trying to sell it privately for awhile but nothing but lowball offers from stupid kids. I'm to the point where I just want to trade it in, despite not too generous offers from dealers as well, for a leftover 06' LGT to take advantage of the factory incentives to "offset" my losses a bit. However, deep down inside I prefer the MY07's, mainly due to the new stereo and SI drive function, since I drive 50/50 local/hwy and would imagine saving a bit of $ on gas in the long-run. If my prelude was sold already I'm definitely going to wait a year to pick up a leftover 07' at this time next year, but..................... Therefore my choices are as follows: A. Trade car to dealer at low price and settle on an 06' model, despite not being 100% satisfied with its features. B. Wait it out and sell car privately, risking further depreciation and dimishing availability of the 06' LGTs, in order to get an 07' next yr. to be completely happy again. HAHA I've set up a poll and would appreciate your input and any other creative ideas you may have for me. TIA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chenc544 Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 Maybe a third option... Take out as much of the mods on the Prelude as you can and sell those on a Prelude forum. You can recover some of the cost of the mods that way. You should then be able to trade in the near stock Prelude to the dealer for about the same money they are offering you now. Dealers generally don’t give you anything for the mods to start with. IMHO the stereo and the SI drive are not worth waiting for the '07. There is an aux-in mod for the current LGT's and I have a feeling the SI drive is more of a gimmick. You can get the same thing by getting the Cobb AP. AFAIK the econo mode for the SI drive just turns off the boost control and retards the throttle response, which is pretty much what the AP econo mode does. In fact for highway driving this is not going to improve the fuel economy much at all compare to just using the cruise control. On the other hand if you want the fold down back seats or VDC (5EAT only IIRC) then the ’07 will be worth waiting a year for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KegTapper Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 I was going to say the same thing - if you still have a bunch of the stock Prelude parts lying around, why not start parting the car out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
super_duper_scoobie Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 Your name looks familiar...frequent po.com??? I'm pretty sure you are, anyways i'm typeshlude from po.com. I was in the same situation you are in now, and this past weekend picked up an 06 lgt. I opted to part out the car, return it to stock condition, and trade it in. I would say if you are planning on modifiying the lgt at all, settle for the 06 (that is unless folding rear seats is that important to you). You should be able to get at least 3k below invoice (1500 of which is the rebate) and currently dealers are offering 2yrs 0% apr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Two-Five Sti-L Posted July 12, 2006 Author Share Posted July 12, 2006 Your name looks familiar...frequent po.com??? I'm pretty sure you are, anyways i'm typeshlude from po.com. I was in the same situation you are in now, and this past weekend picked up an 06 lgt. I opted to part out the car, return it to stock condition, and trade it in. I would say if you are planning on modifiying the lgt at all, settle for the 06 (that is unless folding rear seats is that important to you). You should be able to get at least 3k below invoice (1500 of which is the rebate) and currently dealers are offering 2yrs 0% apr. Hey man, yes I'm two-five boy from po.com. Unfortunately I don't have much left worth pulling off except hids, since I don't have my stock sideskirts and suspension anymore. Can you tell me what you paid for your 06' LGT? Options? MT or AT? and location pls. $3k under invoice brings it down to low-mid $24k range, which I haven't been able to get from dealers yet. Best # I got was $25k but they lowballed me bigtime on my lude. If I could get your # it'll certainly be easier for me to swallow the loss on the prelude. Were you able to squeeze the holdback and dealer cash out of them too? You have these exact figures? That's the only way I can fathom getting down to $3k under invoice. Appreciate any info you can provide me as I'm heading to another dealer this wknd. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chenc544 Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 $1500 Customer rebate $500 Subaru to dealer cash ~3% MSRP (~$1000) for dealer holdback High volumn deale also get additional discounts/kickbacks. Pricing varies a lot from region to region. I'm in CO and I paid $24.6k for a '06 LGT 5-spd w/ armrest, sub, homelink and rocker panel trim. Go to carsdirect.com and get their price for your area. You should be able to knock another $500-$1000 off that price by negotiating with the dealers. Don't bother visiting any dealers in person just use their inventory search to find the car you want then email them about that car. You generally get the best price by dealing with the "internet sales manager" directly. If the quote that they give you is higher than the carsdirect price just email them back and ask them to do better than the carsdirect price. In regard to the mods you could always find a buyer that would be willing to trade you the stock parts + cash... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Two-Five Sti-L Posted July 12, 2006 Author Share Posted July 12, 2006 $1500 Customer rebate $500 Subaru to dealer cash ~3% MSRP (~$1000) for dealer holdback High volumn deale also get additional discounts/kickbacks. Thanks for the insight on available discounts!!! I read about these a few months back but wasn't sure if they're still valid. I've gone to 2 places (with inventory) already and basically hinted that I'm looking to buy at invoice price minus most of their incentives. They either flat out denied such incentives exist or claim it is volume driven. As for this place I'm heading to this coming wknd, I took your approach of emailing them for a price first but a salesperson called me back instead, since they don't have a "dedicated" internet sales mgr. She gave me the whole msrp - $1500 crap but I told her I'm looking to deal at sub $25k. At the end she said its probably workable. Hopefully she's not pulling my leg just to go me to their shop though. :fingers x'ed: Hopefully I can reach a killer deal like yours w/o getting hammered too much on my trade. Thanks PS- did you have a trade-in? If so were you able to get fair value or squeezed on it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V-Power Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 dude, that's one hell of a biased poll. It sounds like you really want the car! There's no either/or about it ... truth be told, you are not going to offset the loss on the Prelude. I got an '05 as '06s were rolling on the lot (invoice + $1.5k incentive + 4% APR + $4k down) and guess what? No sooner you drive that LGT off the lot, I was break even. Coming from a Honda, Subies don't quite hold their value ... but they are a blast to drive! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chenc544 Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 I traded in my stock '00 Celica GT-S. The book trade-in value is $9-9.5k, I got 9.3k. I probably could have sold it privately for $10.5-11k. In Colorado you don't have to pay sales tax on your trade in value so I have to sell the car for $10k just to break even. In the end, I figure it was close enough to what I could do privately so I decided to save the hassle of selling the car myself. BTW, they will ask you how much you expect to get for your trade-in so DO NOT give them a number up front! Because if you give them a number that is now the ceiling that they can work off from. Just tell them you don't know how much it's worth and ask them to give you their best offer and you will check with other dealers to get the best bottom line. Don't be surprised if they really lowball you on the first offer. It's their standard operating procedure. Just smile and tell them you will check with other dealers and get back to them. Don’t argue with them why your car is worth more, let them do all the talking. Once they get closer to a realistic number then you can give them a number to work to the middle with. If they already have a Prelude on the lot or bunch of sporty coupes that they are not selling then they will probably not give you a very good price. The reason is that if they don’t think they can sell your car on their used car lot they will have to auction it off and the auction price will be lower than the average trade in value by quite a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mccorry Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 Don't settle.... you might regret it down the road. Good things come to those who..... wait. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
super_duper_scoobie Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 Hey man, yes I'm two-five boy from po.com. Unfortunately I don't have much left worth pulling off except hids, since I don't have my stock sideskirts and suspension anymore. Can you tell me what you paid for your 06' LGT? Options? MT or AT? and location pls. $3k under invoice brings it down to low-mid $24k range, which I haven't been able to get from dealers yet. Best # I got was $25k but they lowballed me bigtime on my lude. If I could get your # it'll certainly be easier for me to swallow the loss on the prelude. Were you able to squeeze the holdback and dealer cash out of them too? You have these exact figures? That's the only way I can fathom getting down to $3k under invoice. Appreciate any info you can provide me as I'm heading to another dealer this wknd. Thanks! Silver LGT, MT, all weather mats. Located in the bay area, california. I paid $24,440 after rebate, with the only option being all-weather floor mats. I was not able to squeeze the holdback out of them. This was the lowest price I could get out of all the dealers in my area, and i didn't even have to haggle them for it. This dealers internet sales mgr just shoots out the lowest number possible he can sell and leaves it at that, no negotiating. The blue book on my lude with 100k miles on it was ~8500 ('99 sh), and they gave me 7500 for it. Its low, but on par with what i expected to get for it from a dealer. You should be able to get much more since yours is an '01. I would say contact all the dealers with inventory in your area again, but now through the internet. If you submit a quote request from a site like edmunds, they should call you and try to deal. When that happens, just tell em to email you the best price they can offer. Compare all the prices, and start emailing/calling the internet sales mgr back to negotiate. Tell em what price you want, and tell them if they can give that price, you will be buying immediatley. They will start to budge on the pricing at that point. After a few calls back and forth, once the numbers start to settle off, start saying that you will buy from another dealer since they offered a lower price. After a day or two negotiating over the phone/email, you should be somewhere near a reasonable value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moosedaddy Posted July 13, 2006 Share Posted July 13, 2006 Don't settle.... you might regret it down the road. Good things come to those who..... wait. I could not agree more. You don't want to regret such a large purchase (assuming that is you are purchasing and not leasing!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Two-Five Sti-L Posted July 13, 2006 Author Share Posted July 13, 2006 Thanks again for the headsup and your negotiation process guys!! Now that I know what appears to be the "true" bottom line price on the LGT I can set a firm # on what I should pay as the difference between the new and used cars. Hopefully the dealer is desperate enough since they have 3 LGTs in stock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Two-Five Sti-L Posted July 31, 2006 Author Share Posted July 31, 2006 Just a quick update for those who care: Cliff notes: I have sold the Prelude on my own!!! Right now I'm planning to wait it out until the 07's are readily available w/generous incentives like they have for the 06's currently. I guess it'll be another 9-12 months before I can join you guys officially. I'm open to consider a used one as well. Long version: I actually hammered out a deal and left deposit w/a dealer about 3 wks ago for a blk/blk 06'. They offered me the highest $ on my trade vs. everyone else, but didn't have the LGT in stock and has to do their own trade for me. A week later they told me they can't locate/trade for one, even though I already did the homework and told them which dealers have inventory. Long story short they couldn't get it and tried to sell me a silver/blk instead, which I rejected. I made a stupid comment of "I'd rather order an 07's instead" which I believe de-motivated them even more to not bother sourcing a blk/blk. One thing which I found very curious; I went back to dealer to retrieve my deposit this past wknd, and they had ZERO resistance?!?!?! They gladly processed my cc for the refund, w/o evening trying to sell me anything? They were not aware that I had sold the Prelude on my own, btw. I found that rather odd obviously. My wife and I speculate that either they had second thoughts about taking in my modded car as trade, or felt they could make more $ on an 07' model than just $200 over invoice, which was their offer to me once the 06' fell thru. Or they plain ol' didn't like me? LOL Meanwhile, I got lucky w/my Prelude and had a few interested parties, wound up selling it a week ago for $2k more than what the dealer offered. Therefore I can now sit back and get ready to go Legacy hunting again in 6 months knowing I have full leverage this time since I don't have a trade-in tying me up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmm def Posted July 31, 2006 Share Posted July 31, 2006 Wait for one you want. If you settle, down the road you will regret it. Wait Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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