Buying and selling a car the hard way, a case study
Tuesday, April 11
Paying the piper
Now that we decided the 2017 Mazda CX-5 Touring with Premium package was our preferred vehicle, we now needed to get our finacing in order. We decided to finance with Meriwest Credit Union. It was an easy decision. We had a good experience with them when we purchased our pre-owned 2010 Toyota Prius. They gave us an incredible .99% interest rate after breezing through their online credit application.
My online car loan application was sent to Meriwest Credit Union at 11:19am.
The quote that could not be ignored
While I was calling around to dealerships to get inventory and pricing on the Deep Crystal Blue 2017 CX-5 with Touring with Premium Package, the above quote from Al at Fremont Mazda came from the TrueCar inquiry.
WOW, $21.6 just to go with the 2016.5 versus the 2017. $6,000 difference in pricing.
Buying Tip 2:
Mazda fiscal year does not end with the calendar year end like most other car compnies. While most brands are bring out their new model year lineups in August or September of the prior year, Mazda starts rolling out their new year lineup in April of the model year.
Buying Tip 3:
Auto manufacturers do not radically update their product lineups often. Once every 5–7 years or so, there will be a major overhaul of a product lineup. During this rare transition, the manufacturer is faced with an inventory liquidation challenge. Especially if the new product lineup is getting a positive response. As the newly revamped vehicles start hitting the showrooms, existing inventory of the previous year effectively loses thousands of dollars of value overnight. The manufacturer and dealers race the clock to liquidate past year inventory, which results in incredible incentives and discounts.
We knew that the 2016’s were going to have incentives, but Fremont Al’s quote blew us away. We had a decision to make. Were we willing to pay a $5–6K premium to get a prettier car? In the battle between the heart and the head, the head emerged victorious.
We now had our sites on the 2016.5 CX-5 with Touring package. We would learn that comparing the 2016.5 CX-5 Touring with the 2017 was an apples to oranges (or at least Fuji to McIntosh) comparison.
