Honestly this was probably one of my easiest hacks. I was searching for an X2, sorted by lowest price first and looking for the largest MSRP to advertised price sale delta. Spotted this one being advertised for $10k off with all the right goodies like the Premium Package, Mocha Dakota leather seats and in Mineral Grey. Called them up figuring the incentives were already factored in and would be a meh deal.
They said it wasn’t, and applied the lease credit and loyalty credit. I gave them an OL code and they applied the full $1000 amount (surprised me). They are a sonic dealer so they wouldn’t budge on the marked up MF, but the sale price was reduced to $33,994. So already nearly 23% off.
Quickly moved forward with the deal, got paperwork fedexed over, signed, and paid to have the car shipped here. Cost $650 to ship it, but a one way plane ticket was nearly $300, and it was a 10 hour drive. So that was just a bit too much for me to consider trying to save $200 and just had it shipped. Arrived yesterday and the wife loves it.
Now sits next to the $215 wagon until that lease is up in January. Though picked up the car outside my office with my 911.
NOTE, it seems the dealer website has now updated their website to say all the advertised prices INCLUDE the avaliable incentives. So this might be a one-off.
To those who have PM’ed me asking for details, please note the dealer won’t replicate it, and they don’t really have any other largely discounted cars on their lot. They have already updated all their listings to say that the price DOES include all the incentives. Nothing hacker worthy on there.
Love seeing these unicorns and genuinely surprised they didn’t fight you on the usually “creative” sales price that many dealers love to post publicly! I generally ignore those posted prices when shopping for a client and move on to the meat on the bone which is the actual dealer discount.
I agree, and usually all those ads with redic discounts usually mention “all available incentives” but this method has worked before. It’s how I landed my wagon. 9/10 they do something creative, but I guess sometimes get the manager who just wants the car gone. This thing wasn’t even on their sale lot for more than 30 days, and only 1700 miles on it… who knows. Wife is happy!
I set the mileage to under 5000, sort by lowest price. What’s nice about cargurus and cars.com is that they don’t rank up paid ads higher than the actual price.
Autotrader absolutely sucks for this. They have their actual paid ads, just like cargurus, where the first 3 aren’t really the lowest price, but then they have the “premium”, “platinum (maybe?)” and then “standard” listings where you have to sort through a ton of crap to find the actual lowest priced ones. I don’t even bother anymore with autotrader because of this.
Also, the absolute lowest price doesn’t mean the best deal. I was hunting for a car with the premium package. On an X2 it’s harder to tell at first glance since they all have LED headlights, but on an X1, if you see halogen headlights on the lead image, then it definitely doesn’t have the premium package and it’s a low MSRP car. So the $33k advertised price doesn’t mean much on a $39k car with the assumed $3k in incentives, that’s a 10% discount essentially. But if you spot a $33k advertised price with premium headlights, or the premium package in the X2 (larger media screen) then could potentially be hovering around $42-45k MSRP depending on FWD vs AWD. Now that’s a larger price delta, and a better deal which means a better lease term.
It might help to be slightly obsessive about which car and packages you are hunting for. Rarely is the cheapest MSRP going to be the best lease, so those rock bottom prices on BMW X1’s and X2’s of $31-32k aren’t going to yield the best lease deal. So I am usually hunting for fairly loaded cars that are discounted by a ton.
My wife’s only requirement for a new car was a small SUV or CUV since we now live in Chicago vs the suburbs of St. Louis. She liked both the X1 and the X2 so I was hunting for both, though I knew a better deal was going to be able to be had on an X2… plus I actually prefer driving the X2 over the X1, and I think the stitched “leather” dash on the X2 is miles ahead of the dash on the x1, so I was leaning more towards that. But wouldn’t have turned down a crazy X1 lease either.
