With Black Friday just around the corner, we’re here to remind folks that holiday sales events are, more often than not, gimmicks to get customers into dealerships.
Thought this was a given. There is no such thing. Arent end of quater and end of month usually best times. There’s no “special” sale just because it’s the holidays…
Best deals are on a rainy Tuesday at 2PM when nothing has sold, there are 3 no-show appointments, everyone in sales is pretending to be busy, management is giving everyone the stink-eye, and I am on my third lunch. (This is actually pretty true)
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You mean the day when you get attacked by the entire sales staff as soon as you get out of your car.
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That is on Saturdays when I am BBQing. Everyone wants to make sure I bought hotlinks.
Having worked in the industry, I will disagree. Holiday sales can bring in massive savings. Yes it is a ploy to get people in the door, but if you shop around, you can find some incredible deals in November/December.
-Factory incentives are typically the largest at this time of year. This means that you can negotiate the vehicle price down, and on top of that, there is money that the factory will add to the deal that makes things even better for you. Their incentives don’t hurt the dealer’s margins.
-Volume bonuses for dealers are typically larger at this time of year and dealers will get desperate to make a deal to hit that bonus. If you are lucky, you will be that final car to hit the bonus at 7pm December 31st.
-Many lenders offer lower financing deals at this time of year as well to stimulate business.
I am not saying that every listed deal or advertisement is going to be a great deal for you, BUT if there are deals to be made, now is typically the best time of year to find them. When I was at BMW, we needed to sell 1 more 3 series in December for the volume bonus. The girl that ended up leasing it got a $53,000 3-Series for $188 a month, and minimum out of pocket at signing (first months payment, $115 doc fee, licensing etc). I never saw model volume bonuses at BMW bigger than in December because it is the accumulation of the year’s efforts.
Another example would be the deal Subaru did in 2008. They had a hard time selling the 2008 STI, so they had an incentive that any dealer that sold over a certain number of them over the year got major kick backs and incentives for all of the STI’s that they sold in December 2008. I ended up buying a brand new STI with a $44K MSRP for $32K and 0% for 60 months.
So again, are ALL of the deals going to be “A BIG DEAL?” No, but the best deals are usually in Nov December. I try to keep my leasing schedule lined up for them. Also there will not be deals to go around. A lot of these deals are on 3-4 cars in stock and you have to get there early to get the deal. I know at BMW that absolutely existed for Black Friday sales especially.
EDIT: I forgot to mention the extremely obvious other factor, it is year-end, next year’s models are already showing up, and dealers need to current model year cars gone. This is also why you see a lot of factory incentives on current year models that will soon be last year’s models.
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