TC - Did I pay too much?

I'm just sick about it. I mean when I heard this I just about had
to excuse myself to go puke. Some history:

In late '02 I was attracted to the '03 TC EX with its tight margin
to compete feature to feature with the Ody. I got a suppliers
discount of like 1% below invoice and after tag title tax I was out
the door for $26K. I thought why try to get confused looking at the
Lxi's and all the discounts and stuff when I could just get the
tightly priced EX. Well, My buddy just got an Lxi or equivilent
Caravan and the only difference was no auto tailgate for $21K!!!!
Ho he did it was he went dealer to dealer and threatened to walk off
the lot if they came back with a low price that wasn't low enough.
i.e. they shopped the lowest price and ended up at a high volume
dealer. So he saved $5000 that I basically lined DCX pockets with.

But back in '02 I think $26k was pretty much what other's were
reporting that they were paying. I am usually pretty savvy but I
got spanked on this deal. BTW - 3 days after buying a new mvan his
steering hose blew and he unloaded steering fluid all over my
driveway. We took a photo of the Van on the flatbed with his full-
term pregnant wife giving the thumbs up - "We love our new minivan!
Thanks Chrysler!" hehe. When the dealer had later fixed his van he
insisted he get a brand new one. They complied!

Please don't rub it in if I paid too much -

 

<etc>

Post it a third time! Post it again!

 

Do you think I should? The other one looked kind of like a spam topic so I
thought this one might get some responses. Looks like it did

 

Haha don't sweat it. Always a wise guy out there. Anyway you probably paid
more than you had to at the time but remember there is always a better deal
out there somewhere. Just enjoy what you have and rack it up for
experience.

Cheers

 

Hey, for years it has been well known that the Caravan and the TC are
the same vehicle, with the exception of some window dressing, and
the TC has cost more. A long time ago there was more of a difference,
but that difference has eroded.

But as one consolation I have for you, no matter how much your buddy
may crow about saving $5K the fact remains that the Caravan name
has a strong association with cheap, the TC has a strong association
with luxury. The next time he opens his yap you can tell him that at
least you don't have the same van as 3/4 of the Kmart shoppers in
the parking lot. Your buddy knows this well or why would he keep
telling you how much he saved - he's continuting to reassure himself
that his cheaper van is just as good as your more expensive one.

You ought to go ask your wife or girlfriend one of these days why
they go buy their mascara/lipstick/perfume from the hoity-toity
department store instead of just going to Kmart and getting the
exact same stuff for 1/4 of the cost. I guarentee you they will tell
you the more expensive stuff has a better color - and you can take
a stick of their expensive lipstick and a stick of the cheap stuff from
Kmart of the same color, and bring it to a paint store and get a
printout from the color match computer saying they are exactly
the same shade.

The honest-to-God truth of the matter, which you probably don' t
want to hear, is that both you and your buddy are spending a
whole lot more on vehicles than if both of you just bought some
3 or 4 year old used van. Your both essentially funding the rest
of us who don't go buy new cars. While that is fine for me,
you should at least be aware that if you really cared that much
about saving money on a vehicle, you would never buy a new one
again.

To you and your buddy, who have enough money to burn on
fripperies like new vehicles, all this price/cost is some giant game
to you. Maybe one day you ought to try to understand that to
a lot of people, money is a far more precious resource than it is to you,
and that careful husbanding of the peanuts we make during our
working lives is the only thing that will keep us off the street once
we are too old to work anymore. You can afford to lose $5K in
this game with your buddy, to a lot of families, $5K is all they can
spend a year on food to feed themselves.

Ted

 

Gee, nothing like telling somebody how stupid they are for spending "their"
money....... I wish I had a mom like you..

Denny

 

With high gas prices, SUV's and minivans are sitting unsold on dealers lots.
Discounts are bigger now than they were when you were in the market. I wish
I had bought a few Toyota Prius's when they first came out. I could make a
bundle on them now.

 

I'm not telling him how stupid he is for spending his money.

I'm telling him how stupid he is for getting his tit in a wringer over an
amount of
money which he quite obviously can easily afford.

Ted

 

Not now:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=509&e=6&u=/ap/20050601/ap_on_bi_ge/toyota_investigation

Ted

 

How do YOU know he can easily afford it?

 

I agree to a point. But then again there is now some serious competition
with the Ody and the Sienna where before it was just the Ody. So that is
driving down prices.

And to Ted out there - I appreciate your comments and I don't take them
personally. Just take them with a grain of salt. But come on! Losing 5
large to the dealer would make anyone sick - even Bill Gates. Plus I don't
think you are all wise with your used car philosophy. I'm driving a 15 year
old Acura that I work on myself. But having had and hated a used Jeep GC I
vowed to get a new DCX with a warranty and make them fix everything that
went wrong with it. That was a good investment - was it worth say, $5K
more? Not really and sadly my wife still griped about the problems so I
guess no. But used car prices fluctuate sometimes more than new cars. Its
a commodity market and used or new it is volitile I am learning.

 

I already explained that if he was interested in best value for the money he
would have bought a
2-3 year old vehicle where the initial depreciation hit had already been
taken. Since he bought
a new vehicle he obviously has enough money to afford to pay the extra $5K
(or more) surcharge for
the "new car smell"

And frankly if that makes him happy - to spend money on this kind of thing -
as long as he understands
the value of the money he is spending, then fine. However his initial post
shows that he doesen't
understand what those dollars really represent. There is a phrase for this
I'm sure you have heard it's
called "taking things for granted"

While the procedure is laborious, anyone can sit there nowadays with the
Kelly Blue Book webstite
and compare new vehicle prices with how they depreciate, adjusting
everything for inflation, and
build a depreciation curve, and see that the cost-per-mile-per-year is an
inverted bell curve - the
most expensive vehicle miles are the first 10,000 (when the depreciation is
highest) and then drop
down, then later on start coming back up sometime after the 150K range when
everything falls apart.

Someone without a lot of money therefore really can't afford a new car, but
they can afford a used
car with 10-30K miles on the odometer, and drive it until sometime after the
130-150K miles, then sell it.
Of course, what many people think that they can afford and what they
actually can afford are different
things, that is why we have personal bankruptcies.

Ted

 

You should take everything with a grain of salt! ;-)

I think that someone posted a breakdown of Bill Gates income one time, he
makes so much
money that the amount of time he would spend getting sick over losing $5K
would cost more
than the actual $5K itself. I think that actually he would be hard pressed
to take a crap in
less time than it takes for him to make $5K.

New vehicle prices are as much a game between the manufacturer and the
customers as
your comparison with your buddy. That is, of course, all part of buying a
new vehicle.

By the way, one other advantage you have over your buddy I forgot to mention
is that
since your vehicle's initial price was higher it's long term book value will
be higher - which
if 5 years from now you and your buddy get in an accident, you will be
getting a lot higher
check from your insurance company.

My example makes one giant assumption, of course, and that is that the
vehicle will have
what you would term an "average service history" If you buy a new or used
car and
get a lemon, all bets are off.

With new cars, you don't know going into the purchase if what you get
happens to be
a good design. Of course the warranty compensates somewhat for that - no
warranty
pays for your time while your waiting for your car to get fixed - but the
upshot is your
chances of realizing usable miles out of any new vehicle is high. All of
this is known
by most people and is used as a supporting reason for buying a new vehicle.
And most
folks that buy off on that logic make the converse assumption, that a used
vehicle has
a low chance of realizing usable miles, since there's no warranty. (or a
short one)

But what isn't always thought of with the used vehicle purchase is that
simply because
of the nature of it being a used purchase, the buyer can adjust the chance
of realizing
usable miles to be a high chance also. You do that because since the
vehicle is used,
it's weak points become known to the auto community, and all you have to do
is learn
what the weak model lines are and avoid them, then once you have found a
used
vehicle your interested in, you just research that model line to make sure
you know all
the gotchas.

I still think my philosophy works over the long term, though, even
accounting for the
lemon. Consider how many vehicles you will own over your lifespan. If all
of them
are bought in the "used sweet spot" chances are that most of them will not
be lemons,
so while you might, for example, have bad memories of your Jeep GCI, you
have to
average that in with every other car you have owned that didn't give you bad
memories
to really get a true picture.

In closing I will say one thing - my philosophy doesen't work for my own
self. The reason
is that I have got into way too many accidents over my lifetime. The fact
that virtually all of them wern't
my fault and were claimed against the other guy doesen't have any bearing -
the end result
is that I have never owned a used car long enough to fully realize the
benefits of my philosophy
because the jackasses on the road keep smashing them into the junkyard
before their time.
Damn irritating, that.

Ted

 

The way I heard it was that if Bill Gates dropped a $1000 bill on the
sidewalk, he would lose money by taking the time to stop and pick it up
(I would think he has someone to do that for him anyway, but makes a
good story).

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
adddress with the letter 'x')

 

I've always been a used car fan. I did buy a new car, once. Once was
enough! The overall cost of ownership was just insane compared to a
used car.

I will say though, that I think the one exception to what you say might
be the person who buys a car new, then drives it until it dies. My
partner has a 1986 pickup that was pronounced on the verge of engine
death. 10 years ago It's still driven daily. It will make 20
years, probably.

OTOH, you're sure right about research and used lemons. Most of the
cars I've had have been bought at least in part because of good
reliability and durability, and I've had excellent luck with most of
them.

I do wish I'd done more research before buying a Town & Country though.
$2000 every 18 months for transmissions is more than a little steep for
a used car.

Lisa

 

Yes, that is what I often do. The cost of buying another car every 3-5
years is insane. I tend to keep a car AT LEAST 10 years and my 94 Chevy
K1500 is 11 years old and going strong. I fully expect 20 years at
200K+ from this truck. My 96 Grand Voyager just rolled over 167K, but
is fairly young at only 9 years of age.


Matt