NJ Bolt Premier Mic Drop. $5618 One Pay, free after Buypower and NJ Rebate

And everyone always has the same story…

“I’d totally buy one of those right now if it was X price!”

Car can be bought for X Price: “Yeah but it doesn’t have a manual transmission! And they made somewhat reasonable and necessary sacrifices to get it to the price I wanted, while keeping most of the stuff I liked!”

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Person: I need a reliable commuter car that’s good on gas

Jalopnik: Oooh that’s a really tight call between a Delica and a FJ60 Land Cruiser

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100% agree. Good guy, knows a lot about the industry. But def not someone who will get you a screaming deal compared to some of the folks on this site.

For example- on my lease deal, I put $5k down :cry: and he never explained to me why that might not be a great idea.

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That is a huge facepalm by even Jalopnik standards… sometimes there are lease-based TCO that are totally untouchable by purchasing and vice versa. To fail to notice that is just…

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My suspicion is that he didn’t want to get into the usual can of worms when it comes to discussing leasing with the crowd over there. There was somebody trying to debunk me in the comments because I referred to the NJ rebate as “post sale” while discussing a lease. I don’t have the energy or desire to try to explain to that person that any car transaction that results in a title being generated or changing hands is considered a “sale”. On the Bolt Forum I posted my redacted contract to prove to someone that you can indeed get that kind of discount off sticker and I was told that it didn’t count because it was a lease. At the same time they seemed to be close to understanding what I ended up paying (or not paying) and their response was something like “Oh so you’re paying around $20 dollars a month for this, huh? That’s pretty good… For a lease!”

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To be fair, most people CANNOT get that sort of a deal.

You have put in dozens of hours of your time (if not more), you have applied for a specific card, you qualified for specific rebates requiring having an existing lease (so someone with no knowledge and experience of leasing would never qualify for this price), required a Costco membership (what if only Sams Club services a given locale?)

On top of all of this, you already leased a Bolt (for more money) and rolled up to the dealer driving one. 95% of people shopping for a Chevy Bolt lease are not already driving a Chevy Bolt when they arrive at the dealer. This, IMO, is the biggest thing that changes the air when you’re trying to score one of these unicorn EV deals.

It’s not that what you accomplished is a myth; it’s just not repeatable for most people. You went into this with such a specific set of circumstances, qualifications, understanding, an existing Chevy Bolt lease, and a bottle of whiskey. The people you’re fighting with on the comments section of Jalopnik are never going to bother trying to align all those stars. To them, your deal is impossible to achieve.

It takes a dedicated person with the right social skills, plus all the other qualifications above, to pull off your deal. You’re clearly that person, but a lot of the people that lurk online are not. It’s not too hard to see why they can’t fathom your deal as possible from their position.

I actually went to the dealership in the Gladiator. I thought I’d look somewhat gauche doing it in the Bolt I already had.

I thought about trying to clarify some misconceptions people may have had, but I decided against it. It’s usually a waste of everyone’s time.

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Sorry, I posted that once already so figured you would have corrected be my now if not true. Did the dealer you leased the second Bolt from know that you already had the first one? (Registration/loyalty/BuyPower, etc)

After this dealer quoted me an outrageous price (which didn’t include Costco) I replied detailing the deal I was trying to accomplish and included a copy of the contract I signed previously. I was met with radio silence. I just walked in off the street cold with the deal in writing and we used my Volt registration for the loyalty incentive. I never mention Buypower until the deal is agreed to first, not taking it into account.

Got it, so you sent the signed Bolt contract from your first Bolt, in to the dealer where you leased your second Bolt from, before driving off in the second Bolt?

I did. I also mentioned that their dealership was able to offer me 14% off my Volt on my last transaction with them (Different sales manager) so I was looking to be somewhere around or between those same numbers this time. I sent it to several dealers I was negotiating with to show that I knew what kind of discounts could be achieved if a dealership was motivated to do so. It seemed like it could be a useful tool to cut through some of the usual tactics that you can encounter when trying to negotiate a price.

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I misunderstood you there. The scenario you were detailing was really funny so I thought it was meant in a different way. To be clear, none of it actually went down the way you wrote it up!

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I’ve been trying to reproduce this for 2 weeks now, and I’d like to think I’m pretty good as this, and the best discount i’ve gotten so far is 5.5% – And I was so happy to just crack supplier I almost took it. That said, it can clearly be done, but nobody is saying it’s easy. I feel like most are settling around the 6% to 8% range and those deals just seem to be luck, quite honestly. Either that or I really suck at this. I’m curious what will happen at end of month however…

Bridgewater is currently holding a lot of the local market hostage. I’m wondering if their tune will change over the next couple of weeks.

Between Bridgewater & Schumaker you have over 30 units on the ground and I haven’t seen any inventory change to either franchise yet.

I know of one dealer who just got a Premier in this week but they wouldn’t quote me more than a few hundred off of supplier at the moment. They have 2 LTs in transit and 10 more being built for the rest of the model year. If other dealerships are in a similar position inventory should hold steady or improve going forward, which might force those dealers holding them to start to play ball.

This was posted in another thread. Wonder who contributed to this article??? :joy:

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I like Tom’s posts so I thought he might get a kick out of this. He said thanks for sharing and that was the end of it. I was wondering if he might have some column space to fill up in the next few days. The funny thing is I really framed it to him as “I know you take an ‘it depends’ approach to purchasing vs leasing and the crowd at Jalopnik is usually very anti leasing, so let’s see them wrap their brains around this”. He kind of missed that entirely, or chose not to bring it up.

Can someone please provide a link to the story?

Edit… I see it now thanks.

Which dealership did you use in New Jersey?