Lloyd E Parsons
On 2014-02-19 05:59:39 +0000, sms said:

sms
On 2/18/2014 4:54 PM, -hh wrote:

-hh
On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 6:39:08 PM UTC-5, sms wrote:

sms
The average age of vehicles on the road continues to increase so apparently there are many customers with a long term mindset.

-hh
Not necessarily: it could be as simple as "I can't afford a new monthly payment of $X for a new car", so they keep on plugging away with the old one.

sms
It's fairly easy to find a starting point from which to negotiate from. Look at the "x in stock at this price" ads, get quotes from someone in USAA, find the invoice price and deduct the holdbacks and factory-to-dealer incentives, etc. to try to get a rough idea of the actual dealer cost (often factory to dealer incentives are not easy to find).

-hh
Getting a handle on a dealer's true cost is a handful, and easier said than done. A coworker just got an Accord at IIRC 10% below the supposed Invoice, for example.

sms
Honda used to eschew incentives but recently they've followed Toyota into that whole game: <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230372210457923998300427 0504>. Swapping higher margins for higher volume can be a dangerous game but once one manufacturer do3es it the others feel compelled to follow.

Lloyd E Parsons
Yep, practically all of them are doing some incentives these days.

I remember when it was only American built cars that had all of them. The imports sold pretty much at sticker because they claimed they weren't inflating the sticker price like the US models were. Whether that was actually true or not, I don't know but they convinced the market it was.