I was tracking the EQE loaners throughout the state of Florida and sent out offers last week - this dealer responded with my target deal right away and I signed yesterday. Very no-hassle all the way through.
24/10k one-pay all in at $13,134 (if I sell the Wallbox which I don’t need, I net out to $12500).
It’s a high-mileage loaner (8200 miles) but exactly what I wanted - the other dealers with lower mileage loaners wouldn’t get close to this on a one-pay.
The dealer still has an EQS 450+ loaner if anyone is interested (even more miles on that one). Also - DM me if you want access to my tracking sheet of EQEs in Florida (some EQSs that I was tracking too).
In Jan/Feb at least, there’s a special offer to get the Mercedes-Branded Wallbox level 2 charger - there was a form to fill out at the dealer and then I submitted the VIN online. It will then get sent to my home.
I had to specifically ask if the promo was still happening, and the salesperson checked with finance and sure enough he confirmed it’s still going on and my loaner is eligible.
This is in addition to the 2-years free Electrify America 30-min sessions, of course.
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Some dealers will put them on their websites, but it isn’t consistent. You’ll either have to go through a broker or do the leg-work of calling dealerships and asking if they have loaners / demo units they’re ready to sell.
Here’s how I did it - keep in mind this finds “likely loaners” but a quick email to the dealer (or request form on their site) will get you the answer if it’s (a) actually available and (b) a loaner leasable as new.
Some dealers sell their loaners as new, some as CPO. So I did an AutoTrader search for both New and CPO, and sorted by miles (highest first). That way even the new ones that had miles on them would show at the top
Systematically went through that list to filter out obvious non-loaners (e.g. Carfax shows as personal lease) and filtered out trims/colors I didn’t want
A deeper dive on the dealer web site could tell me if they were included in their special “service loaner” inventory page (if they have one), and dealers would usually have Carfax links where I could see if the car was ever actually “sold” (loaners will show service history and then “listed for sale” but no actual date showing it was ever sold)
Could usually find listing date (days on lot) either through Carfax or by searching Truecar by VIN (many dealers don’t publish through Truecar though)
Through this system I built a spreadsheet of VINs with MSRP, dealer URL, listing price (some not showing discounts), miles, listing date, features, etc. and once I had it built I went on an email blitz to put my offer out (in my case I had some spare time in January to lay the foundation by building the spreadsheet to get ready).
I would also clear the list of sold cars once in a while. I did this by selecting the whole column of URLs and pasting into a Chrome extension “Open Multiple URLs” - and going through the tabs to see which ones were dead links.
Was it worth it to save a couple grand on a lease? Maybe.
Yes. I got to the numbers in the calculator in the original post. 20% dealer discount, $7500 EV credit, $5500 fleet, 2-year one-pay 10k miles per year for a grand total of $13k.
I thought certified cars can’t be leased and receive the “new car” incentives? I remember reading that on here awhile back so I always skipped on any that were “CPO”. Don’t tell me I’ve been missing out?? Lol
Some dealers list their loaner cars as part of their CPO inventory but they still qualify as new cars under the lease incentives (and I think they use the same CPO inspection checklist). But definitely this took some digging in the Carfax histories to distinguish the likely loaners from actual CPO cars. What I ended up getting was an 8000-mile loaner that was listed in that dealer’s “new” inventory but in my search across Florida I did confirm with dealers that some of the ones listed as “CPO” could be leasable as new.
Appreciate the response! I always look at carfax first when looking for loaners, but I never really checked if there was a discrepancy on the listed CPO vs carfax history.
Just to clarify, if carfax has history event: Offered for sale as a Mercedes-Benz Certified Pre-Owned Vehicle then it is for sure a CPO. But you’re looking for listed CPOs without that history event, correct?
Actually, I just checked, and one of the ones on my shortlist, at the Tampa dealer, has “Offered for sale as a Mercedes-Benz Certified Pre-Owned Vehicle” in its Carfax history, and they were definitely giving me a quote with new car incentives.
And his quote here (he didn’t seem to want to do one-pay and wasn’t quite there with the discount, but you can see the $13k in incentives and the 0.00171 MF).
What I would look for is whether the Carfax actually had a “purchased” event or if it showed it was a personal lease vehicle in its history - if not, and if it seemed that the dealer had the vehicle the whole time, should be a loaner.
Others with more experience leasing loaners may weigh in here.
oh yeah that completely changes things. Yeah I normally filter out anything that was sold/purchased to an individual.
I keep an eye out for those “dealer took inventory” or whatever it is, as those usually mean “loaner”.
But the one you listed has neither. I guess those will be added to the “MAYBE” filter and reach out to fully confirm.
