After seeing this deal I decided to try my hand at replicating it to replace our 2020 Bolt. After test driving it locally and striking out with preliminary numbers at that dealer, I found our desired blue color base Engage about 100 miles away which was the only one within 250 miles. Fortunately, it was sitting on the lot for 60 days when I inquired, and they gave me 7.5% off MSRP right away. Working the numbers, it brought a 3/10K to $443/mo and with MSDs it was $428/mo. Problem is they were not able to get MSDs to work in their system and at that point I decided to move forward anyways since my wife said she liked the car.
We have an Infiniti in the household, and I was told at the previous dealer that we do not qualify for loyalty cash. I asked again when I arrived at the dealer and they were able to apply loyalty giving me $2,000 in taxed incentives ($1000 Ariya Bonus Cash, and $1000 Loyalty). They had it all ready to go, but then they had an issue with the mileage. The odometer was at 3390, but Nissan would not let the Bonus Cash apply so they rolled back the mileage to 499 on the paperwork and gave me 3/12K to offset the existing mileage, effectively giving me 2600 more miles.
The good: The seats feel like you are sitting on a couch, it is very quiet, and roomy. The base model has a lot of features that I have not used like blind spot warning, lane departure, assisted steering, and adaptive cruise control. Recently we rented a Pacifica on a trip and those features were pure garbage, but the same features on the Ariya perform way better and genuinely impressed me.
The downsides: It is not as zippy as the Bolt, smaller battery, and the MSRP of the vehicle. The heads-up display is a bit laggy when displaying navigation directions. I will chalk this up to me not knowing how to operate the car yet: CarPlay directions do not display on the head up display. Also CarPlay navigation instructions play at 100% volume every time despite turning the volume down.
I do not believe I qualify for CVRP since I got the rebate on the Bolt back in 2020.
Good luck finding a base Engage in SoCal. This deal is not replicable.
