Well, I spent about 3 and a half hours at my dealership last night and have walked away without a new car but with a lot more knowledge of how to deal. Lessons first, then the story.
1. If you want to get the best offer, go to the dealer on the last day of the month and say you are willing to take delivery today IF the terms are agreeable. They love to get a few more sales in on the last day of the month.
2. When playing with Mazda's online payment calculator, when you enter the sale price, it will automaticly add any rebates Mazda is running when displaying monthly payments. Do NOT subtract the rebates from the sale price or you will walk into the dealer thinking you can get a much better monthly payment than possible.
3. The CX-7 is a great vehicle(car, suv, whatever you want to call it). Get handling, high quality interior, fun to drive, and practical to boot.
On to the story. I have been talking to the Mazda sales rep for about two weeks now about getting a Speed6. I finally had a chance last night to take my car in and have them appraise the trade-in value on it. It is a 2005 Mazda6s Hatch, manual transmission, with everything except leather and heated seats. It is great condition except for the big scratch on the left side skirt. It has 22,000 miles on it. After checking Kelly Blue Book, I came in with the number 14,900 for the trade amount I wanted. They looked it over and offered me 16,000! I was in shock. So, things are looking good. My payoff amount on my lease is 19,000 though, so I am still 3,000 in the hole.
On to the offer - Mazdaspeed6 GT 25,100. 36 month lease, 479 a month. 1,200 down. Hmm. That is a hundred dollars more a month than all the numbers I had worked up before I came in (and yes I had taking into account my negative equity). I tell my sales reps this and he actually has me pull up the Mazda lease calculator and show him how I got the numbers. He then took that to his finance manager and he came out and showed me my error. This is where I learned lesson number two about the calculator automaticly adding in rebates, so when I was playing with numbers, I was giving myself double rebates. Oops. The finance manager did come back though with another offer of 24,600 for the MS6 and 17,000 for my trade. Wow! Still, with my negative equity and double rebates gone, it still didn't enter my budget (payments would have been 426/month with 1,200 down, I was looking for 370/month). I felt bad because they were making me a great offer and being nice about it too, but I just couldn't do it.
Well, the general manager was the next to parade out and tell me how great a deal I was getting and when I still said no, he offered me a Speed3 at MSRP (they were running a 3,000 mark-up on the window sticker) with the same trade-in numbers as before. This actually turned out to be more expensive. Then he offered me a CX-7 and I said I would love one but it would have to be 4-wheel drive. He said "let me see what I can do." They pulled on around and let me take it for a test drive and that is when I fell in love with it. Only problem I found is that the stock radio sucks. You really need to get the Bose package, but that was another 1,500 dollars. Anyways, to wrap things up, they came back and offered me 395/month lease with 1,200 down, invoice cost, and I said if they make it $0 down, I will sign the papers. They couldn't do that and since it didn't have Bose in that cost (It would have uped the monthly payment another $30), I left. They were really nice and made me great offers, but I couldn't see spending more when I still love my 6. This was all at Russ Darrow Mazda in Milwaukee, WI. I highly recommend this dealer to anyone in the area (plus they have two Speed3 on the lot right now).
1. If you want to get the best offer, go to the dealer on the last day of the month and say you are willing to take delivery today IF the terms are agreeable. They love to get a few more sales in on the last day of the month.
2. When playing with Mazda's online payment calculator, when you enter the sale price, it will automaticly add any rebates Mazda is running when displaying monthly payments. Do NOT subtract the rebates from the sale price or you will walk into the dealer thinking you can get a much better monthly payment than possible.
3. The CX-7 is a great vehicle(car, suv, whatever you want to call it). Get handling, high quality interior, fun to drive, and practical to boot.
On to the story. I have been talking to the Mazda sales rep for about two weeks now about getting a Speed6. I finally had a chance last night to take my car in and have them appraise the trade-in value on it. It is a 2005 Mazda6s Hatch, manual transmission, with everything except leather and heated seats. It is great condition except for the big scratch on the left side skirt. It has 22,000 miles on it. After checking Kelly Blue Book, I came in with the number 14,900 for the trade amount I wanted. They looked it over and offered me 16,000! I was in shock. So, things are looking good. My payoff amount on my lease is 19,000 though, so I am still 3,000 in the hole.
On to the offer - Mazdaspeed6 GT 25,100. 36 month lease, 479 a month. 1,200 down. Hmm. That is a hundred dollars more a month than all the numbers I had worked up before I came in (and yes I had taking into account my negative equity). I tell my sales reps this and he actually has me pull up the Mazda lease calculator and show him how I got the numbers. He then took that to his finance manager and he came out and showed me my error. This is where I learned lesson number two about the calculator automaticly adding in rebates, so when I was playing with numbers, I was giving myself double rebates. Oops. The finance manager did come back though with another offer of 24,600 for the MS6 and 17,000 for my trade. Wow! Still, with my negative equity and double rebates gone, it still didn't enter my budget (payments would have been 426/month with 1,200 down, I was looking for 370/month). I felt bad because they were making me a great offer and being nice about it too, but I just couldn't do it.
Well, the general manager was the next to parade out and tell me how great a deal I was getting and when I still said no, he offered me a Speed3 at MSRP (they were running a 3,000 mark-up on the window sticker) with the same trade-in numbers as before. This actually turned out to be more expensive. Then he offered me a CX-7 and I said I would love one but it would have to be 4-wheel drive. He said "let me see what I can do." They pulled on around and let me take it for a test drive and that is when I fell in love with it. Only problem I found is that the stock radio sucks. You really need to get the Bose package, but that was another 1,500 dollars. Anyways, to wrap things up, they came back and offered me 395/month lease with 1,200 down, invoice cost, and I said if they make it $0 down, I will sign the papers. They couldn't do that and since it didn't have Bose in that cost (It would have uped the monthly payment another $30), I left. They were really nice and made me great offers, but I couldn't see spending more when I still love my 6. This was all at Russ Darrow Mazda in Milwaukee, WI. I highly recommend this dealer to anyone in the area (plus they have two Speed3 on the lot right now).
I got 25% off msrp. 24k & some change down to 18K. Now thats a hell of a deal.
