My friend just financed a 2021 Sonata SEL. His credit is pretty bad, but I think he still got ripped off on the car. I’m not sure the exact terms of the lease, but he told me he put $1k down, with payments of $500 per month for 72 months. He claims this was the price after $2k dealer incentives. How bad is this deal form the scale of 1 to 10?
Adding up the payments that’s about 37k for a 27k car. It could have been a decent deal on the car, but 10% interest would kill ya. “I’m not sure the exact terms of the lease”. There are no terms. This isn’t a lease at 72 months. It was purchased.
Wow. It looks like the salesperson at that dealership will be getting a nice bonus
So we don’t know exactly what the MSRP was (though we can guess, but for example, convenience package is a $2,200 swing), we don’t know the purchase price, we don’t know the interest rate, what extras/accessories or what F&I products were purchased either.
I mean, it’s pretty obvious it wasn’t a good deal. And the friend in question clearly didn’t do anything meaningful research and threw himself at the mercy of the dealership. But if he doesn’t care, I guess we shouldn’t either.
I will say, it always astounds me when people with less than stellar credit end up buying so much car. If it was me, I’d probably have looked at a comparably used vehicle for around half the price, paid it off inside of 36-months and got my credit back on track for the next vehicle and with the lowest total interest cost as possible. But to each, their own.
Edit: on a quick look, there are plenty of nice CPO alternatives, as an example this 2018 Sonata SEL with 16k miles for around $14k: https://cpo.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/certified-pre-owned/inventory/details/year/2018/model/Sonata/VIN/5NPE34AF4JH668136
No clue without more details such as MSRP, sale price, dealer add-ons, and finance APR. How bad is your friend’s credit? Below 600s?
Around 630
“My friend”
I also have a friend who thrives on creating her own misery.
There’s really nothing you can do.