"off site" location

The dealer can only suggest it because a conversation was started with a dealer who didn’t have the vehicle on hand. If dealer A advertises it on their website, but at an offsite location, it generally isn’t too difficult to determine where that is. I’m not faulting the OP here, just saying it’s a potential learning experience; if you see that a vehicle is at an offsite location, that often means it’s at a sister dealership, so for the highest chance of success, approach them.

Worst case scenario here is that the local dealer won’t go as deep because they’d need to trade for the vehicle, and a denial of an offer will be in the system, so the chance to go to the sister dealer is likely out.

Given the current state of affairs, I agree that there’s no reason not to try to work with the current dealership. In the future, go straight to the source.

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You being a potential lead might be shared, but you can never know for sure if the denial of an offer or your communication with a salesman/SM will be shared with other dealerships. No way to know so make an offer to both would be my way to go about it.

Case in point - I had a dealership SM tell me they don’t do out of state deals, and that I would need to have a CA address to lease from them. Reached out to their sister dealership, and they accepted my offer after couple back and forths. Keep in mind their website lists cars from both dealerships.

So now the dealership with the vehicle has multiple people inquiring about the same car. Demand just doubled.

Looks like customer will have to do a custom order now.

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I assure you there’s more than 2 people always inquiring on a specific car during any given week. Anyways, I think we’re going off on a tangent here. I’ve given my advice to OP and you’ve given yours too, they can choose as per their liking.

First rule of dealer trades, don’t contact the dealer with the vehicle your interested in separately from the dealer you intend to sign and finish the deal with.

Does not matter if they’re in the same umbrella corp, or same state or same brand.

Finalize the details with your current dealership, and you can make them aware of the vehicle you want, but the rest of it is between them two. Your signing dealer will work out the rest.

Any chance this is on a Lexus?

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I was in that situation late last year - worked it out with the local dealer first and it was no big deal from them to get inventory from a sister dealership. Only thing they had to confirm was that the vehicle wasn’t already ‘spoken for’ or -already being actively worked on a deal.

Keeping with the transparency mantra, I have gone against my better judgement and did the whole contact both dealers, but I guess due to the trim level of the both vehicles or pure luck dealership X with the stock (didn’t want to the deal). Dealership Y accepted the deal, did the swap and the rest was history.

But for beginners and/or folks trying to get a in-demand vehicle, follow the general rule of no calling.

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