My sister-in-law wants to buy a Camry LE 4 cylinder this weekend.
Between USAA and Costco pricing, the best deal so far is $20906 (this doesn't include the $750 discount for cash or the $500 loyalty discount). She currently owns a Toyota so if she doesn't finance she's at $19656 (including an $80 doc fee). This also includes floor mats which are in the vehicles from the port, if she could find one without Toyota's floor/cargo mats it would be about $160 less. This includes no other options (no moon roof, no power seats, etc.).
Does this seem reasonable? The last new Camry LE we purchased was $16988, so this is almost $2700 more than we paid. Of course that was back in 1996 and didn't include ABS or all those airbags.
The last new Camry LE we bought we did go to southern California where it was about $1500 less than northern California (a tad under 17K versus a tad over 18.5K) and the northern versus southern price difference now seems to be about $1000 judging from comparing the lowest advertised prices in both regions and looking at the difference in factory to dealer incentives ($19400 in Northern California, $18,400 in southern California). However this car is for my sister-in-law and she's not the type to go to southern California to save $500 (by the time you fly down and rent a car and stay one night your savings are cut by about $500). The loyalty rebate is $1000 in southern California but only $500 in northern California which accounts for part of the cost difference. It's strange that there's such a difference, but the reason you stated is the same reason I've heard--a lot more competition in southern California.
I got her a price quote through USAA and Costco. The USAA quote was about $700 less than the Costco quote. The USAA quote was almost exactly the same as the newspaper ads which seem too good to be true and always tout "x in stock at this price" and are always out of stock when you get there, but the USAA quote was good for any model 2532 in stock. The dealer that worked with Costco insisted that there was no way that the USAA quote was real, that it was too far below invoice, even though I think few buyers ever pay anything as high as invoice, let alone MSRP.
Personally I would have waited another couple of months for the 2013's the be closing out but she's the type that when she decides to make a purchase she doesn't put it off. Her old car was a 1992 Camry and she wanted a new care _now_. I think this was an okay weekend to buy because they had the $500 loyalty incentive as well as the choice of $750 or 0% financing. They also had the $1000 college graduate discount but she graduated about 20 years too late to qualify for it. At first I told her she should pay cash, but then I calculated the interest she'd get on $23,000 for five years in a CD (even at the current ridiculously low rate of 1.75%), and realized that it was actually a much better deal to take the 0% financing.
I guess I haven't bought a new car in a while because two of the newest things they try to sell you in the finance department are "dent and windshield protection" and prepaid maintenance (though now new Toyotas come with 24 months of maintenance). Of course she declined all the add-ons though the prepaid maintenance would not be a bad deal if you normally went to the dealer for maintenance which I suspect some people do.
I think it's rather incredible that the street price of the base Camry LE has gone up only about $1000 in the past 17 years considering the additional equipment on it (10 airbags versust 8, ABS versus no ABS, Bluetooth, folding outer mirrors, LCD screen for the radio, etc.).
BTW, when did Toyota start requiring 0W-20 synthetic oil in the 4 cylinder Camry?
The finance person was going on and on about how good the prepaid maintenance deal was because synthetic oil is so expensive. Actually synthetic oil has come way down in price . It's still $2/quart more than conventional, but that adds only about $10 to an oil change.
Sure, if you do it yourself. If a shop has an advertised "oil change **most cars" rate, I would expect them to add the entire cost of the synthetic oil, especially for a newer grade like 0w-20 cuz the shop's bulk oil is almost free my comparison.
That's true. Those in my extended family that don't do our own changes go to my brother-in-laws garage. He'll only charge them $10 more for synthetic. He has bulk 5W30. He doesn't charge extra for bottles of conventional 5W20 even though it costs him a lot more than the bulk.
There are services that will do that work for you, i.e. .
On vehicles that are not in any kind of shortage (like Camry and Corolla) you can probably do just as good by waiting for the combination of multiple incentives and finding the lowest "x at this price" low ball pricing.
The Costco pricing was definitely no deal, but the USAA pricing was equivalent to the lowest local dealer advertised price but without the restriction of "x at this price." That said, my sister-in-law still paid about $1000 more than she had to, but to get the lower price she would have had to go to the L.A. area (southern California Toyota region) where prices are generally $1000-1500 less than in the SF Bay Area (northern California Toyota region). Her net cost was only a few hundred under invoice because she chose to finance rather than take the $750 discount (she could have paid cash but the cash would generate more than $750 in interest if put into a 5 year CD).
One thing I noticed is that some dealers were trying to sell the Camry L for the same price as other dealers were selling the Camry LE for, but there actually aren't a lot of the Camry L model being built.
What I liked about the USAA service is that, unlike Costco, they send you the price via e-mail, i.e. . With Costco they insist that you go into the dealer so the dealer can show you the invoice price and the Costco price. Then the dealer can explain to naive buyers how good of a price they're getting since the Costco price is so close to invoice price, but in reality the invoice price is not what the dealer pays the manufacturer for the vehicle.
Everyone wants to think that they got the best price in history on a vehicle but of course this is almost never the case.
The big money for most dealers comes in the finance office where they pressure buyers into extended warranties, prepaid maintenance, and one I'd not seen before "dent and ding insurance."
I used their service when shopping for my 2004 Highlander. As I recall, the report you get lists all the available option packages, dealer invoice on them, and I forget what else on the make/model you select. I was satisfied and glad I had the info available when shopping around.
The dealer invoice for options is available from many places. In fact the Camry LE that my relative purchased did have one port option that we didn't want and the dealer charged us the "invoice" price for that option and it matched the invoice price on the material we had.
What's difficult to determine is what factory to dealer incentives are in place at any moment as they don't publicize these like they do the factory to buyer incentives. This would be good information to have when deciding how much to offer to the dealer. Sometimes they'll let it slip out, but rarely. However you often know when there's such an incentive in place as suddenly all dealers are advertising prices that are way under invoice.
The dealer cost for a Toyota used to be 5% under base invoice (plus any additional factory to dealer incentives that are going on at the time). The 5% is broken down as 2% holdback, 2% TDA (advertising reimbursement from Toyota) and 1% WFR (wholesale financial reserve). But this may have changed because now I see articles claiming that they've switched to base MSRP . However it's not clear if the TDA and WFR are now also based on MSRP or if they kept those based on invoice.
The dealers do pay in to a regional advertising cooperative fund and many will try to add an "ad fee" onto the final price but of course that's just a way for them to try to justify the total price they're charging, just like they do for the "doc fee" (are any dealers still trying to add "dealer prep" fees?).
In addition to what you said, look at the dollar yen ratio over that time. Does anyone really think they're getting the quality, durability in a Camry as 17 years ago? Mine's an 01 that I can, as you mentioned, replace w/ new for around the same money. I will be buying another 2000 or 01 if I need another Camry.
Does anyone really think they're getting the quality, durability in a Camry as
17 years ago? Mine's an 01 that I can, as you mentioned, replace w/ new for around the same money. I will be buying another 2000 or 01 if I need another Camry.
They did cheapen the Camry a lot between the third and fourth generation (92-96 versus 97-01) but I was impressed with the 2013 (seventh generation) since some of decontenting that they began in 1997 was reversed, and some features were added. I.e., one pet peeve of mine is non-folding side mirrors. Our 1996 doesn't have them, but the 2013 does (of course in Asia you get the Camry with power folding mirrors). The
2013 doesn't have a hood strut like the fourth generation. Of course there's a lot more standard safety equipment like TPMS, ABS, traction control, stability control, and all those additional air bags.
Will the seventh generation Camrys last as long? Probably not. The third generation was built like a tank and there's still an enormous number of them on the road. But Toyota is very conservative when it comes to making major changes that could affect reliability (unlike Honda which has been plagued by problems, especially with transmissions).
I think that part of the solution to the dollar/yen ration has been U.S. manufacturing. When we bought our 1996 Camry, the west coast Camrys were still mostly from Japan, and the east coast Camrys were from the U.S.. This time I did not see any Japanese Camrys on the lot.
As I was thinking about an Avalon Hybrid, I looked at a Camry Hybrid. With "leather seats". And I couldn't have been more disappointed. Not only were the seats not "leather" (they were PARTIALLY leather, in weird areas), the bottom cushion itself was absurdly short.
It rapidly became apparent that in the Toyota world, $27K-$30K is not meant to ACTUALLY give you a family car. No, they want you to head up to the Avalon world, $35K plus ($40K for Hybrid Limited), in order to get what a very nicely equipped family car used to be for $25K.
The non-hybrid Camry is very much a family car and costs less than $20K. The hybrid Camry is a lot more and you lose a lot of trunk space, but if you do mainly around-town driving and have a van or SUV that you use on vacations the Camry hybrid is a lot nicer than a Prius and can comfortably sit four adults.
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