I went and test drove a new 300C last Saturday and was thoroughly impressed with the comfort and performance. Initially I thought it was an ugly looking vehicle but it got a whole lot prettier once I tromped on the gas pedal and that hemi v8 started singing.
I was seriously considering buying one except for two things. Trading my 97 LHS with 78K miles was only worth 18 to 22 hundered which is less than 10% of it's original sticker price. (Any ideas on why the resale value of Chryslers suck???) And the other is the car is still new to the market and I'm thinking "why buy now when I can wait for a couple of months and get a rebate". So, how long do you think it will be before the rebate starts?
I can't help but think that one and two are somehow related and it Chrysler could fix the problems causing low resale then they wouldn't need the rebate.
Depreciation on Chyrslers are about average according to Consumer Reports. Same as Toyota camry. Did not take long for good discounts on Crossfire and Pacifica. Wait a bit on the 300C.
Because the world is full of brainwash victims that will pay 80% of sticker for a clapped-out Honduh with 120k miles and then excuse replacing half of the engine and the whole transmission as "routine maintenance," but won't tolerate it when an American car drops one milligram of oil on their garage floor.
I like the fact that Chrysler resale value sucks. It allows an intelligent buyer to get one for cheap and run it out to 200, 250, 300k miles and laugh while the Honduhs drop like flies at 150k.
I don't think the depreciation is average. I realize trade-in is wholesale versus retail but they had a 98 Subaru on the lot that was black, 77K miles and was pretty beaten compared to the LHS but it sold for $7200. I'm figuring that was about 30 to 50% of its original MSRP. At $2200 it works out to be less than 10% of its original MSRP. 30% of MSRP would be around $9000 which would work out to a 70% plus profit margin based on $2200 wholesale. I can't imagine them getting anywhere near that, LHSs around here retail for around $5000-6000 which is still alot less than the Subaru. It's like the sales manager told me "I can sell the Subaru but I have to wholesale the LHS because no one wants them". Oddly enough, this dealer didn't bother to mention the $1000 customer loyalty cash that was available. Maybe my real problem is the dealer. In any case I guess I'll keep the LHS until the tranny dies since it's pretty much worthless on a trade-in.
Price your car at kbb.com or edmunds.com to see what you should get for it. I would think you should be able to sell it (private party sell) for like $5000. (Of course the dealer will offer you much less than the car's worth!)
Depreciation on Subaru's is extremely high according to Consumer Reports. Believe your dealer or believe Consumer Reports or check yourself at various sites on the net.
Here's another thing that's fun: go to cars.com and look at the 1997 LHS's for sale. This is all the LHS's for sale in dozens of newspapers nationwide, both dealers and private parties. A big list pops up, and you can sort them by mileage or price (or year if you pick more than one year). This will tell you exactly what they are going for all over the country, although there are some newspapers that don't feed the system, and it's not like you're seeing all of them in the whole world. But it's close enough to be interesting.
We just bought a 97 LHS last fall with 65k on it. Using cars.com it appeared that they were priced from about $5000 to $10,000. We decided to try to snag a low-mileage one for $5000, and I succeeded, but the car had obviously been repossessed, so somebody else had already eaten some cost on it. This was only about six months ago. The cheapest one with under 80k on it at that time was right at $5000.
I didn't look, but trade in of $2000 is pretty safe for them and probably not that far off the mark. If you look at NADA average values, the difference between trade-in and retail is about 3 grand. If these "average values" are what they claim, that means dealers make about $3000 per car minus their costs. That's how they feed their families. It's a lot of money, especially when your car is only worth $3000 *retail*. There's nothing wrong them pricing products so that they can live, but just be aware if you trade with them, they're going to take as much of your money as possible, because they need it to live on.
Now I know some dealer will probably reply to this and say "I only make $50 a month and blah blah can't trade in blah blah and everybody expects me to loan them blah blah and how am I supposed to blah blah blah." And that may be true, and it may be that the NADA (national auto dealers association) is just a bunch of liars that falsified all the values. I'm not going to argue with that, but I think it's more interesting to take it at face value.
Any time you trade in a car, you'll get screwed. The dealer doesn't love you. He just wants to make a profit!
The resale on your '97 LHS is low because of its poor reliability rating. It is on the "not recommended" list from Consumer Reports among others. On this car you probably have fixed or will fix the intake manifold gasket, transmission, air conditioning, lower control arm bushings steering rack, et. al. ad naseum. I know, because I own an Eagle Vision, a mechanically identical car.
That's why I'm keeping mine. I've fixed all that stuff and I still like it a lot. Furthermore, because it is worth only about $2K, I'm self-insured for collision and comp. My total cost is now about $25 per month. For that I'll keep it as a disposable car used during bad weather or for use by my grown kids when they visit.
And the other is the car is still
From what I've read the 300C Hemi has lots of orders. I doubt Chrysler will rebate at all unless the supply exceeds the demand. Perhaps your best bet is to wait for $3 per gallon for gas.
The are attempting to fix the problem by creating a good product that doesn't need rebates. I'm beginning to think that they may have succeeded! Look at the article in today's Wall Street Journal about the Hemi.
Have you seen the depreciation on VWs? It's practically non existant, which is funny since the cars comes pre-disassembled. I open up the classifieds in my newspaper and I see dozens of '01 Jetta TDIs with 200,000+ kms for >$12K. Meanwhile an '00 Neon with 90K is work $7K. One might think that it has to do with reliability, but it really doesn't.
For example, Plymouth Acclaims might sell for $500, while an identical shape Civic of similar era is $1700, even though the Acclaim is as, if not more, reliable.
Really, there is absolutly no logic to resale values. Your best bet is to hang on to the LHS until you come into a reason to get rid of it. It won't depreciate a whole lot more, so the longer to keep it, the more you will get out of it.
Plus I'd want to see a few of these things out on the road before buying one myself. Where it is a totally new platform, it might take 1-2 years for the bugs to be ironed out. Failing that there will probably be some good deals at the end of the model year as they try to clear them out.
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