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Re: dealer incentive for 09 MDX [eltuti2002]

by dom6183 on Sun Jan 04 04:55:44 PST 2009

Sharing my decision and information in the form of a sequential story. I've been reading and posting here for around a week while working toward a decision and action. Looking to get into a new lease to replace my wife's BMW 3-series lease that is up in two weeks. Once she finally decided on the Acura MDX, I got underway in earnest. These boards, when people post clear information, are very helpful. We live in southern NJ, between Philly and Atlantic City. This past week we visited two local dealers within 25 miles of our home, test drove for my wife, and I came prepared with a written offer for each for a 36-mo lease for a base MDX. She didn't care about the Tech Package, the base unit was plenty loaded for her. Advice for anyone leasing: always start with the "sell price" - it's the most negotiable element (with warning: watch how the dealer calculates sales tax - search the Internet for your state's method, and don't let them get too crazy on doc fees). The residual rate (%) and money factor are set by the leasing company (in this case, American Honda Finance Co - AHFC). After reading posts on this board, and paying the $14 to get the Consumer Reports price service (from their web site), I went in with a purchase offer of $34,569, or $214 below the CR bottom line of $34,782, which included a lease incentive of $2,000 and took off the dealer holdback of $1,230. Turns out getting to this "bottom line" was not as simple as I hoped. These first two dealers counteroffered with 36,581 and 36,382. I thanked them and left, saying I was going to keep searching for a dealer who would get to within $500 of the CR bottom line. I got home and worked the Internet sales staff of eight more dealers (this made 10 total) - three in Philly, one in DE, and four more in NJ, all the way north to DCH in Verona. I made clear my offer and intent to move this weekend. All replied except DCH - many of you are buying there, and maybe they're too busy to respond! Without exception, they all replied I was off on two counts: (a) the lease incentive was $1,500 and not $2,000 as I was calculating, and (b) most of them were not willing to negotiate much into the $1,230 holdback figure. In fact, one politely chided me that the holdback was the only thing keeping the dealership alive and in business! So I worked the phones and internet again, increasing my offer. I also had to decide, do I just wait out the current offer that ends on 1/5/09 and see what 1/6/09 holds? I went back on this board to Aug08 postings to see how previous AHFC offers had changed in the last 5-6 months. The "summer sale" in effect in August had 2008 leases at .00245 MF (it is now .00178 much better) at .54 residual (now is .53) and as much as $2,500 cash incentive. That was end of model year. During the fall months all of these figures moved around, some better, some worse. The money factor went as high as .0027, residuals never higher than .54, and sometimes there was $0 cash incentive. Cranking those ups and downs into my spreadsheet, and seeing the resulting payment, things were all over the map. None of us knows for sure what will happen after 1/5/09, and looking at past trends, I decided that today's offers were pretty darn good (.53, .00178, $1,500), and even if they got better, I would not develop buyer's regret. So I decided to keep pushing ahead for a deal before the current offers expired on 1/5. It became apparent to me that each dealer differs in how much of that $1,230 holdback they were willing to sacrifice to make a deal. Still working the phones, the best deal I received was $300 into that holdback. The CR dealer invoice for the base MDX is $38,012. Dealer gets the $1,500 cash incentive from Acura corporate on a lease, reducing that to $36,512. Several counteroffers I received were higher than that figure. I got the dealer closest to my home to send me an offer via email of $36,261. I had different dealer suggest over the phone that he could go down to $36,000 but needed $200-400 to get the interior color my wife preferred (she wanted the taupe). I had decided in my mind it was worth $200 or so to get her the preferred color interior; those are the kind of emotional decisions that remove flexibility and lock you in! This dealer closest to me had that color combination. Now, some folks here on these boards got DCH and maybe another Northern NJ dealer to do a lease deal with a sell price under $35,000. That is impressive! As I mentioned, I contacted DCH via email, but didn't get a reply. I could have phone called, but I will admit I was not fond of the idea of traveling 100 miles to them. My choice, it may have cost me, but also, as I read in a post by "goneflyn", that lease deal had a different residual, so I couldn't help but wonder that maybe it was not AHFC? I didn't ask goneflyn. Maybe he can reply here to this post. So yesterday afternoon I emailed that dealer my offer sheet of purchase at $36,213, also separately citing all the other costs like taxes, state tire fee, tags, registration, etc, that I would pay upfront and out of pocket. I had $0 cap cost reduction, which I prefer to do for leasing. We settled on their offer of $36,261 as they included the dealer wheel locks and rubber mat package, which I could have told them "take it out!" but I decided was worth $48 to me. With the residual of .53 and MF of .00178, the 36 month regular payment came in at $499. All the other costs came in at a little over $3,000 - 595 acq fee, 1299 state sales tax, 336 registration and tags, 499 first payment, 7.50 state tire fee, 195 dealer doc fees, 145 state of NJ LFIS luxury tax. We spent a couple of hours there while the vehicle was prepped and we did the paperwork, and we drove home after dinner last night. The deal is done, I am mentally exhausted, and I hope this story is useful to someone else. Best wishes, and I'll be back on these boards when my next purchase or lease gets underway!

Re: 2009 Acura TL AWD with TECH [LubDub]

by nubbin4 on Sat Jan 03 18:08:47 PST 2009

Hi LubDub - I plan on visiting this dealer next week - to be clear - you paid 40k for this car versus MSRP of ~42k or did you pay ~36k??? Also - when requesting an on-line quote from them - is it typical for the dealer to get you the color you want via a neighboring dealership or do they more often stick to what's in their inventory?

Re: Purchased MDX Tech [croftonhills]

by klenj on Sat Jan 03 17:54:53 PST 2009

I still have to the end of Feb with my current 06 MDX lease. But I still pulled the trigger on 12/31/08 and purchased MDX Tech because: 1. Purchase price of 38,400. is 36. above CR bottom line. 2. 2.9% interest 3. gambled that Honda is more likely to discount price to move cars at the end of a year then the begining of a new year. I have purchase 7 cars from Ramsey of Acura and I always got the best deal at the end of December compared to other times of the year. I may have gambled wrong and better deals may be ahead. But that is life, someone is always getting a better deal and someone is always getting a worse deal than you.

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