Victory On The Lot: 95 Winning Strategies For Buying Or Leasing A Vehicle

By Marc Rothenberg

Exciting or dreadful! Which best describes your car-buying experience? 

"Victory On The Lot," by long-time industry veteran Marc Rothenberg, is a comprehensive resource that clears away the fog of purchasing a vehicle in an entertaining way, providing you with the knowledge and confidence you need

• Language: English
• Publisher: HSN Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Jul 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990910911

Marc Rothenberg

Marc Rothenberg has written extensively on the automotive buying and selling experience, and has worked in the industry for 10 years helping thousands of people get into - or out of - a vehicle. He is married with two grown children, and when he's not writing about cars he's working on his next book projects.

Book preview

VictoryOnTheLot_COVER.jpg

© 2024 by Marc Rothenberg,

All rights reserved

HSN Publishing, LLC; 5 Greentree Centre,

525 Rt 73N, Marlton, NJ 08053

ISBN (paperback): 979-8-9909109-0-4

ISBN (e-book): 979-8-9909109-1-1

FOR HOPE, STACEY, NEIL, AND MARC

This book wouldn’t have been possible without you

INTRODUCTION

Odd, isn’t it, how new cars and family vacations share a unique sort of bucket list; the happy result of logging all those hours at work. In a year stuffed with endless chores and I-don’t-have-time-for this obligations, going shopping for a new car is an exciting distraction from anyone’s daily routine, but there’s a catch: in order to reap the benefit you have to go out and buy one (a car) or get there (a vacation), and in either case, it’s exhausting.

For the eager traveler, getting away means a day saturated with 4:00 a.m. alarm clocks, questionable food, cramped hours in the air, and waiting: lots and lots of waiting. It’s a long and tedious process and a major headache, but well worth the effort by the time the sun finally sets below the horizon on the first day.

Car shoppers dread the car-buying process as much as the bleary-eyed traveler fears the trip. Sensing that there’s a pot of gold within reach, anxiety-ridden buyers know that all they have to do is endure a few hours of cagey salespeople and predatory finance managers and the prize is theirs: pain followed by gain. It’s almost assumed shoppers have to grin and bear it—a rite of passage—but it doesn’t have to be that way. Nowhere is it written that the process of acquiring a car has to be miserable.

In my ten years on the sales floor I’ve seen a witches brew full of good, bad, and ugly as only car dealers can manage it. Keys to a trade-in suddenly misplaced because the customer was about to walk away without buying. A surprise charge for key replacement coverage that mysteriously found its way into a contract. A phone quote hundreds—even thousands—lower than the price at the store, and so on. But you don’t have to walk into a dealership feeling like they should be headlining the next installment of America’s Most Wanted. Be one step ahead. Learn about the strategies dealers use to separate you from your money (the problem), and how to sidestep those traps and win big on the lot (the solution). I’ll show you what to look for and what to avoid, how to negotiate for the best deal, how to get the best financing rates and the most money for your trade; all while filtering out high-pressure attempts to get you to… BUY RIGHT NOW!

Much about the paperwork underlying buying or leasing a car is important to know, but frankly, boring. Forms and documents, apps and processes, and always numbers, numbers, numbers: sometimes understandable, other times confusing… always unavoidable. To help navigate through this fog I could have written a helpful textbook, a Do this when you lease, Do that when you buy type of book, but that’s a snoozer, and I wasn’t interested in helping insomniacs get a good night’s sleep. Like a soothing chaser to help the medicine go down, I find telling stories along with facts a far more interesting read.

Besides the basics of leasing vs. buying or how to get the most money for your trade-in, learn how a stunning 1940’s Hollywood actress co-invented a technology that eventually crowned her, The mother of Wi-Fi, with practically every car, truck, and SUV on the road today using a technology she invented. And discover perhaps the best car chase ever filmed (in Bullitt, 1968), which still retains its armchair-gripping realism six decades after it was made; a realism that no amount of modern-day special effects can duplicate.

For most of the 95 topics explored here, sidebars do the introductions. A woodworking shop and an acoustic guitar help explain why multiple test drives aren’t just a good idea, they’re a great one!; what early Florida real-estate swindlers and big pharma drugs have to do with bait-and-switch tactics; why the tantrums of three-year-olds aren’t very different from the seven key negotiating tips you should always use; what Pac-Man—the old, dot-devouring video game—has to do with your credit; and what diner waitresses have in common with the specialized lingo tossed about freely on a sales floor.

There are pieces on air-traffic controllers and women car shoppers, circus big-top shows and the risk lenders take with leases; school bands and cosigning for loans; what baseball ground rules and dealership buyer’s orders have in common; why cash isn’t king around a finance department; and what soap operas have to do with hanging on to an aging car.

See how to get beyond the big numbers in car ads (the only part advertisers want you to see), how to overcome a lowball, silent appraisal quote on your trade-in, and how to withhold a hard pull on your credit report until you’re ready to buy.

At a dealership—where the bulk of car buying transactions take place—most people are wary and suspicious of what comes next. To simple questions they respond with an audible groan and a visible grimace, thinking back to the last time they were in a showroom:

After sitting with their ‘closer’, I felt like I went 8 rounds with the heavyweight champ!

It was like getting mauled by a lion!

They just started yelling at me because I only bought one car, not TWO!

That needs to change. While there’s a decidedly GM slant here (ten years of selling The General’s cars and trucks will do that), all the numbers, strategies, tips, examples, and stories can be applied anywhere, anytime. Cherry-pick just the right section you need, or read it cover-to-cover for a complete understanding of the car-buying process, and how you can use it to your advantage. Whatever you choose, if you want to understand how to get the best deal and successfully navigate through the car buying and leasing process in an entertaining and informative way, then this book is for you!

Marc Rothenberg

Mahwah, NJ

June, 2024

Chapter 1

BEFORE

YOU GO

The smallish, muscular man with the backward baseball cap and matching, opposite-facing dragon tattoos on the back of each hand, peers down intently at the wooden crate before him. It was cheaply made, hastily pinched from a back alley off the main drag, and covered by two, thin strips of brightly colored cloth that overlapped each other. Two large, misshapen gray rocks at either end held the strips in place, anchoring them in the light morning breeze.

Reaching into a small, velvet drawstring bag, the man produces three small tortoiseshells and a solid, oval-shaped green pea. Spreading the shells apart at a precise distance from one another, he deposits the pea under the center shell for his gathering audience. Covering it, he begins shuffling the shells around in swift movements, pausing every few seconds to lift a shell and expose the contents before resuming his shuffle. By the time all the shells have finally come to rest, no one has any idea where the pea is; a classic shell game.

Many feel that’s exactly what car ads are like—giant shell games. People never read past the big and brassy headlines shouting larger-than-life sale prices before running down to the dealer to get one. But when they arrive and find a completely different final price, the hocus-pocus of a classic shell game is all they can think of. Is that what’s really going on?

Wading through car ads

All car ads have fine print, outlining what you must do in order to get the low, low advertised price. But like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, one (the low number) is no good without the other (the fine print). Everything required to get into a new lease for the rock bottom advertised price is right there in the ad, and unlike many other types of "terms and conditions’’ statements running to several pages of strangulating legalese, the fine print in car ads is usually limited to a short paragraph or two. The print is tiny, written in a formal, stuffy style that’s difficult to concentrate on and harder to understand. Does that constitute false advertising or a bait-and-switch tactic? While more than one disappointed shopper has cried foul to anyone willing to listen, it’s neither. Typical ads look like this:

Chevy Trax FWD Crossover,

$59/month

$3,495 down payment

Nissan Altima S, FWD, $148/month

$5,350 due at signing

Mercedes-Benz AMG C 43 Cabriolet $1,079/month

$6,973 due at signing

To varying degrees, most ads have the following additional information:

Lease term (24 or 36 months are the most common)

Miles allowed (typically 10,000 per year)

Required money down

Taxes and fees are extra

The MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price) the ad is based on, or possibly a dealers stock number or specific VIN (vehicle identification number)

Where the ad is valid (at participating dealers)

Not all customers will qualify

From the ad for a Chevy, it looks like a new Trax can be yours for $59/month… but only if you comply with all the conditions spelled out in the ad. What are they?

You pay $3,495 due at signing

You pay taxes and fees due at signing (estimated at about $1,500, depending on your state’s tax rate and bank/dealer fees)

The Trax you pick has a MSRP referenced in the ad, or less

You qualify per the bank’s lending standards

You take no more than 10,000 miles per year in the lease

But what if you need 12,000 miles/year? Then the price goes up. And if you need more features that push the MSRP of the vehicle higher, or if you want to roll all the taxes and fees into the payment instead of paying them up front as the ad requires, or if you want a 36-month lease if the ad says 24… then the monthly price ticks up a little—or alot—for each change. In short, any deviation from the advertised requirements means that the monthly payment changes, and that can be a major point of frustration for consumers who aren’t paying close attention to all the details. Most people just see the big $59/month figure and ignore all the rest, which is why they feel cheated.

So, the next time you’re looking at a print or social media ad for a vehicle, try and take in everything: the big, sexy number AND the all-important disclosures (NOTE: Due to their short duration, TV ads make it impossible to read though or completely hear all the disclosures). The advertisers did their job grabbing your attention; now it’s your turn to read everything they’re telling you.

Dialing for dollars

Car dealerships thrive on face-to-face negotiations with customers. They want to sit across a desk and haggle (or dictate); not discuss prices over the phone. That’s why asking for quotes without being present and accounted for can be like hoping for a straight answer from a politician; it’s not impossible to get but, well, good luck with that. Many dealers won’t give quotes over the phone while others only want to tease you with "low-ball" figures, throwing numbers around like a gang of skeet shooters. The idea is to get you in the door… any way they can.

But you don’t have to visit every dealership just to discover what deals are out there. If dealers won’t play ball because of their business practices, here’s how you can still get an idea of what your ideal vehicle might cost.

Start by looking up manufacturer ads, independent of the dealership’s ads. You’ll find out what rebates and interest rates are on the table and whether you qualify for any.

Don’t forget to add taxes and fees to the quoted prices. While ads typically don’t spell out all applicable costs (for example, since tax rates vary depending on where you live, ads typically say only, plus taxes, tags, license, and registration fees), asking the dealer for this kind of information isn’t giving away any state secrets.

If you’re responding to an ad, compare the MSRP of the vehicle you want with the one quoted in the pitch. If the advertised car is based on a $29,000 MSRP vehicle but you’re interested in the $33,000 version, you’re going to pay more than the ad price.

Adjust for your circumstances. Are you putting down less money than the ad requires? Do you need more miles than the limit stated in the ad? Is all-wheel drive a requirement for you instead of the front-wheel drive car in the ad? If so, you’ll need to adjust your payment accordingly.

While you may not be able to get an exact quote on what you want over the phone, you can come close with a few clicks and an online search before ever setting foot inside a dealership.

It’s the best/worst thing

Road & Track, Car and Driver, Edmunds, Consumer Reports—to name a few—are all deep-dive automotive consumer resources with some heft. For guidance and advice, high pedigree publications like these provide millions of people with layer upon layer of useful information, off-the-beaten-track news, and extensive product reviews for their next purchase. They’re experts and they know cars, but they’re not always on the same page as each other. Rivalry between publications, where competition for eyeballs is fierce, often leads to dueling opinions just to establish an angle. One reviewer says it’s great but another says it stinks; that can drive consumers crazy. Were they testing the same car? Who’s right?

At the end of the day, it all boils down to you; you’ve got to drive it, like it, and most of all, be comfortable with the price

As the one who has to live with and pay for your car (it won’t be the reviewer—they’ve already jumped onto the next assignment), the advice article you’re reading is just a placeholder until you can confirm or deny your own take on it. As the politicians like to say, trust but verify. But of course, before you even get going on a test drive, you want to know what the experts think and how they arrived at their conclusions.

A luxury ride but a boring interior.

Does that imply an uninspired cabin concocted by designers in a rush to be somewhere else, or is it just a simple design, which might appeal to you? Is a sluggish transmission the kind that would cause problems for you merging into traffic or are you the I drive 55 type and don’t care for speedy merges?

Professional reviews offer great insight into a potential purchase. Most are sprinkled throughout with helpful information; which cars have high consumer satisfaction surveys, which hold their value longer, which tend to have mechanical issues, which are less expensive to operate, and so on. But at the end of the day it all boils down to you—you’ve got to drive it, like it, and most of all, be comfortable with the price. Avoid the temptation to let reviewers influence your decision more than they should.

What did he say? Car lingo 101

Cheerful diner waitresses with pen and pad and always apron-ready, prepare to jot down rush hour orders in efficient, simple language only cooks can understand. B&B (bread and butter), two dots and a dash (two fried eggs and a strip of bacon), or a hockey puck (a well done burger). Film sets also have expressions