And some dealers offer incentives for new cars, but not for preowned ones. And some also require you to finance to get certain incentives. And some have a minimum amount you MUST finance with them. Ask me how I know!
You will be fine! Good luck with your car purchase!
With a Chevy dealer, if you’re a Costco member, look up their dealer list.
If your dealer is on the list, you might get a better price just by them having assured pricing with Costco.
You might also see if you can find one similar at Carmax, etc. - just to ensure pricing is in line.
Good luck.
We were low-balled as we were only offered $400 for our 20 year old toyota van so we sold it it to our mechanic’s delighted niece. We just got the Prius Prime. Charged as much as they allowed ($5000) and wrote a check for the balance. We didn’t discuss payment at all until we agreed on the price.
@HImom im just curious…how much did you think a 20 year old Toyota can was worth?
Same question to the OP. You have a 17 year old car that has seen better days. I’d take whatever you can get from the dealership…but I’d also be happy if they took the car…which they really can’t do much with.
It depends. An older Lexus you can drill get good money since they sorts last forever
You want an “Out the door” price before deciding to buy since they will take on fee’s that you don’t need to pay. Hopefully you can watch a few of the these. The car edge videos are good. Father (used to be a finance guy and salesman at a car place) son (just his son. Lol)…
They show you exactly what to do in like every situation. Listen to a few of these and learn how to negotiate also. They have tons of videos but some really good tips as well and fun to listen to.
I didn’t know what the van was worth but the mechanic and I both thought it was worth much more than $400, since it ran great and nearly everything worked perfectly.
@MMRose let us know what happens! Car shopping is no fun…but in the end, it’s usually fun to have a new to you car!
You have to remember, on used cars - they invest usually thousands, and need to make thousands for it to be worth their while. But one that old is just going to auction.
We normally just donate the car. I have only sold one vehicle to a member of the public, for cash. We got $2500 or so, if I’m remembering correctly. It was about a decade old, 1990s. It ran pretty well—Oldsmobile sedan.
I doubt my OLD Mazda MVP even went to auction in total. My guess is it was sold for the parts that still could be used…like the third row seat that no one ever sat in.
But bottom line…the car had zero value to me, and I was t interested in selling it, or continuing to insure it. I was happy the dealership agreed to take it.
I wondered who in the world would buy my old grand cherokee with the roving electrical problem and boatloads of miles. Our car guy (who sold it auction for us) said old cars like it usually end up in Mexico because labor was cheap so they just keep fixing them and fixing them. (This we in the early 2000s so don’t know if anything has changed.)
At storage space, spouse would see these guys cutting old cars in half. He finally asked and they cut them in half and ship them overseas (these guys sent to Africa) where they would be welded back together. I guess they were considered “scrap metal” or something like that so cheaper to ship than cars??
Bought a new car (hybrid) 3 months ago, traded in a 13 yr old car, 133K miles, just to get rid of it. They gave us a number which included a very modest trade in value for the old car.
When we went to leave, they asked us where we were at—I told them that we’d feel better if the price was $700 less–they said ‘sure, we can do that’ and adjusted the trade in value accordingly.
Trade in number is an arbitrary figure that dealers can play with to give you more of a discount, I guess.
OP, what happened in the end?
Thank you everyone for all your advice!
I drove to the dealer and test-drove the car. I was very familiar with this model because I’d driven other versions that we had liked but that we had rejected for not having the right combination of features (for instance, we learned we didn’t want a sunroof because my kids are very tall and the sunroof reduced the available headroom by too much). This car was great, but had one very problematic feature – the view from the rear-view mirror was too dark and we couldn’t find any way to address that. To complicate matters, it was one of those new mirrors that lets you toggle between a mirror view and a camera view, so most of the help we were finding was meant for the camera view.
Finally…we (duh!) realized that the rear window had been tinted and that there was actually nothing wrong with mirror/camera combo. The dealer offered to remove the tint (no charge) it to see if that helped and voila – lovely car.
Went to sign all the paperwork but hit a snag with the EV credit that the car was eligible for, so things have been left in limbo until Monday when their proper managers are available to address things.
And everyone was right – I was offered only a few hundred dollars for my trade-in. We are going to keep it for a while as a third car, since it has a lot more carrying capability than our other two cars and we occasionally have need to drive a lot of stuff around. The main problem with this is we don’t have a working garage or carport (odd housing configuration) and our driveway really cannot easily accommodate three cars, especially with two of them being electric and needing to be next to the charger. But if that doesn’t work out, we’ll find someone to sell it to privately or to a dealer near us.
Or, as @thumper1 was saying, perhaps we will donate it. We can claim KBB value for our taxes if we donate it, right? It runs great, but it has some minor exterior damage and the interior does show 17 years of wear with kids who grew from toddlers to adults during that time!
When we donated ancient minivan years ago to public radio, the arrangement was that they would give tax receipt for the higher of appraised value OR $500. But that was back in the days when we itemized. In recent years we’ve just taken the $29K standard deduction, so no tax advantage to car donation.
That car had issues, like a cracked side mirror and inability to holding a battery charge when undriven a few days. If I had a good running car, I’d likely sell it cheap to a family in need or donate to a local organization that helps single parents (usually mothers) who are in need of reliable transportation.
With the standard deduction, this might not work. But I bet some teen looking for their first car would love a $500 purchase that runs, assuming the damage is cosmetic only.
There is definitely a shortage of first cars today for many families as cheap used cars no longer exist.
Yes, we tried to find someone we deemed as deserving to “sell” our older used cars which ran very well. We accepted the few hundred or gave it free, depending on the situation. Often they had new tires and had recently been serviced for much more than the “sales price.”
Look at a couple of the videos I posted. It will give you great knowledge and their fun to listen to. One actually goes through all the paperwork that you will sign and how to reduce your cost. Knowledge is power!! Good luck.