New Cars For Sale - Can You Trust New Car Prices?

coming up how walking into a car dealer uninformed can make you the lamb at the abattoir especially if you're a woman flying solo this really is disgraceful car dealers love to bitch and moan about how tough it is today selling cars and yet the palazzo versace during a dealer conference still has the highest density of Rolexes and ill-fitting armani in the entire first world it's probably a photo finish with drug dealers they've got slightly fewer Rolexes but drug dealers Armani is generally first-rate drug dealers know how to wear it whereas a roomful of car dealers remains a monument to human ugliness I think David Attenborough said that or maybe it was Hunter s Thompson one of the two I always get them mixed up a couple of other key differences drug dealers are at least authentically criminal they don't hide behind some trumped-up pretext of underlying respectability and they treat you better too if you're a client as this depressingly real-life story proved you couple of weeks ago I reported on a delightful lady named Michaela who wanted help deciding between a Land Rover Discovery sport and a he owned a Santa Fe so we did the objective analysis which came down pretty convincingly in favor of the Santa Fe just click the link down there and you can watch that full report right now I'll wait here patiently while you do so when I posted that report I flicked Michaela an update just to keep her in the loop she got back to me with the full story of what happened to her at the dealership and then she sent me the documents that corroborated my jaw just hit the floor I could not believe it land rovers marketing spin had already done the job Michaela wanted a disco sport it was a done deal she wanted one the rest should be history so Michaela trots off to her local land rover dealer in Sydney she's done the research she wants a disco sport td4 SC auto with seven seats grey and with that ridiculous glass roof that doesn't even open nice engineering touch their land rover admittedly in the UK there is no case ever for opening a roof except maybe on your ex-wife elsewhere in the world of course there's a gigantic ball of hydrogen fusion energy that just seems to float across the sky once a day creating a completely different roof dynamic I'm surprised they haven't seen the pictures even in beautiful Sully Hall recommended retail price almost 61 grand so that's not including on-road costs the scumbag selling Michaela this car apparently doodles on a pad and says presumably with much fanfare we can squeeze you in at seventy eight thousand five hundred dollars drive away sign here Jesus thankfully Michaela elected not to proceed but it makes me wonder in what universe is it reasonable honest ethical or even just outwardly plausible for a car that's listed at just over 60 grand to be a commercially defensible drive away proposition at just under 80 however does that work I needed expert guidance on this so I went straight to the top George Lucas for inspiration I thought to myself if ripping off car buyers was Star Wars who would be Yoda simple it was mercedes-benz I found one of their cars online with the same recommended retail price it's the base model c-class pass box that runs and hides in the corner every time it sees the skin on a rice custard and let's not forget that the boys from Big Bad Ben's are actually pretty good at extracting money under tenuous pretenses but even the hallowed three-pointed star formerly in my mind the Grand High pooh-bah of trying it on financially seems to think a reasonable figure for driving away with a sixty one thousand dollar recommended retail price is about 67 grand so you break down these costs right you can't argue the statutory charges they're fixed by law read Joe and stamp duty three and a half grand but dealer delivery that's interesting and by interesting I mean an institutionalized industry-wide unjustifiable ripoff here's what you're actually paying for fit the Reg Oh plates detail the car check the fluids and fill up the petrol tank at Benz that'll be two and a half grand seems expensive they don't even deliver the car you come in and pick it up so even the name is a falsity but mercedes-benz has recommended extortionate delivery fee appears to be holding an empty sack in comparison to this Land Rover dealers effort whose recommended dealer delivery fee was six thousand nine hundred and ninety nine dollars I bet they worked so hard to scrape it in under that critical seven thousand dollar psychological barrier right because seven thousand dollars would be outrageous $69.99 is merely absurd and reprehensible if I was land rover's marketing manager eh I'd kill myself and be I would be beyond livid that any dealer had the audacity to undermine so completely my efforts to make that vehicle seem even vestigial II attractive thankfully Michaela pressed the dealer on cost I've read the emails here's the understatement of the year response from snake boy back at the dealership well I don't know about you but I get the feeling he's done this before I interpret that response to mean aren't you lucky I'm just bending you over the desk here at Land Rover with no lubrication because if you were over at Porsche right now you'd be copping all of that plus the hot wax and the ants it's playground stuff it's like we're assholes but they're even bigger assholes than us so that makes us much nicer than you first thought right seven grand just for the plates the detail and a tank of fuel absurd and even that doesn't fully explain the incredible $12,000 total disparity between the driver way price of a $61,000 Mercedes Benz and a notionally $61,000 Land Rover that's masochism writ large and it was offered to Mikaela clearly by a sadist Micaela was way too diplomatic in my view clever though I particularly like shyster like to use that more but she's way too kind I mean how exactly is this behavior by them supposed to help you form a relationship with the brand come on let's not forget that Land Rover dealership would be walking away with a very tidy profit at 67 grand drive away in fact that's the absolute maximum anyone ever should pay for that car there's always room for negotiation built down into the price if you can't get a few thousand bucks off it's a complete free kick for the dealership just to be perfectly clear one of the biggest problems car companies face is the commercial behavior of their dealer network dealers are generally separate businesses with the franchise so the ability of a parent company to control dealership practices that were first implemented by the Roman Empire then by Hitler and later by the Mafia is actually very limited Land Rover has its own problems to the Discovery sport is definitely not the poster boy for value in medium SUVs it's lousy value objectively at 67 thousand bucks drive away at just under 80 grand why even bother importing it or building it or turning on the lights in the factory dealerships comporting themselves like this one in the matter of kim jeong-hoon or mahmoud ahmadinejad are exactly why buying a new car still sucks in a 21st century especially if you're a woman buying a new car is terribly stressful always unpleasant and often repulsive and it's extreme like this it's an absolute violation but it need not be this way cars are really just commodities dealers don't add any value dealer a dealer be who cares they're just a place where you buy a car the dealership is therefore not more than a glorified vending machine in this commercial environment the only thing that matters is the price and the only effective way to get that down is to get different dealers competing for your business increase supply relative to your demand economics 101 you do that and the price drops the obvious question is what have you got to lose in Mikayla's case the answer is about 15 grand so if you'd prefer to be several thousand bucks in front just contact me via the website Auto expert combo you it's dead easy to buy a car this way and it's an absolute relief like suddenly discovering there are strip clubs in heaven obviously a difference of opinion there don't forget to like this video you can leave a comment below to let me know what you think and subscribe for regular updates I'm John Cadogan thanks for watching

Channel: AutoExpert TV

Views: 109,511

Rating: 4.8954248 out of 5

Keywords: new cars for sale, car prices, cheap cars, cars online, new car prices, dealer delivery, car broker, Car Dealership (Industry), car dealer, car dealers, car dealerships, land rover, land rover dealer, land rover discovery sport, discovery sport td4 se, land rover discovery sport td4, auto expert, john cadogan, buy cars, buy car

Id: 9wAUdojj3iA

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 07 2015