I got a quote from a dealer today for a $125.25/mo payment with $2728 ($400 cash down + $125.25 first payment & 2203.02 in fees).
Since my car safety inspection expires at the end of this month, I took care of that to finish my Uber driver sign up and visited a dealership nearby on a whim. Turns out, they were able to improve the numbers: $115/mo with $2500 out the door ($115 first payment, $2122.42 in fees and the rest as a down payment). I sprang for excessive wear so there are no surprises, which in hindsight I should have paid up front. Anyway, wife is pleased and so am I so huge thanks to everyone on LH.
Three negatives to this deal:
- There was a down payment technically
- They told me at first I could choose between red and black so I choose black but later they gave me the oldest one on the lot which was red; the concession for going so low.
- The longest part of the process was proving I was an active Uber driver. On one page I saw said you just needed to sigh into the app and show you could go online. On another it said login to your profile and show your name with an Active status. I did both and printed out a copy of my profile page and showed I could go online in the app, but they said I had to provide my Uber ID or they’d put a $1K hold on my credit card. We spent about an hour (and a half?) trying to figure out how to get this Uber ID number looking on Reddit, Uber driver forums etc. Eventually I said forget it, put this on pause and resume once I heard back from Uber support because I didn’t want to do this hold. Shortly after that they said they’d just go with the profile print out and left it like that.
Aside from staying on budget (mostly anyway) the other positive was establishing a relationship with the sales guy, who was genuinely friendly, upfront, forward and honest. If anyone in NoVA or the DMV wants details dm/pm me and I’ll share more.