Hekotat
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What vehicle do you drive?
- Thread starter Marmac
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Hateyou
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Right. A $42k Yaris is stupid. You can buy much more of a car with that, in performance and QoL/comfort shit.
Hot hatch are usually younger guys who don’t have families yet. They also don’t have that kind of money. I thought the Veloster N was a good little car at it’s price point. The interior is janky but that’s ok cause it keeps the price down and younger guys don’t care about interior as much. I would have loved that thing in my 20s.
Other fast options out there like the WRX STI (even though no hatch) getting into the $40s just make me lose interest. I’m curious if they’ll bring the Levorg over here as the 2022 STI cause it looks great and roomy and brings the hatch back but I have a feeling it’s going to start in the $40s and make me just go buy another lame Impreza or Forester.
Hekotat
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Even 35k for the Veloster N is nuts for whom they are targeting. I'm pushing 40 and make good money and that is really pushing it payment wise. Then you factor in a 7-8 year loan on someone who doesn't know any better and they're in for a bad time.
I flat out refuse to spend more than 20k on a car because I don't want to pay a crazy amount on a car payment. The fact that these loan contracts are pushing 8 years to soften the blow, and you factor in young adults who may not be financially stable or responsible and things aren't going to go well. This is why I think the car industry will be the next big crash.
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Burns
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While I am sure there are various demographics that they are looking at, such as people that have so much money they don't care (the rich parents demo), people that will pay the price for nostalgia, or people that are just, generally, bad with their finances; there are other factors at play.
Having premium models in their lineup can help sell different models and packages, as well as get people in the door of stealerships. It puts the idea in customers minds "I can turn this $20,000 car into that $42,000 car, if I want to, eventually."
Having easily identifiable car packages helps the sales team, sell cars, using a type of "option close." Give three or four options for people to pick from and you will sell more mid-range packages (this has diminishing returns if you add too many options). Generally, people don't pick the most expensive option, for various psychological reasons on top of what they can afford. So by adding another tier in pricing, it can push people to pick a higher, than they otherwise would, package tier.
P.S. In the basic option close, you give the rube, err customer 2 similar options to chose from, and they get to pick one (when both options still make the sale).
Hekotat
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Hateyou
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Yeah the jump from ~$28k to $35 in one year is nuts. They should’ve went the type r route and bumped it up by $1-2k a year.
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Hekotat
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Well they could just remove a bunch of the features or make the car so expensive and amke them ala-carte. I don't need bluetooth, back up camera, navigation, good interior, touch screen, etc. Just give me a fun car to drive to take my mind of this shitty simulation.
Hateyou
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I wish they would do a little more of that too. The fast models are always flush with options I don’t care about and I could shave $3-5k off if they’d let me. I just want something fun with a kick ass stereo. Backup camera so I don’t run over a kid. Variable cruise control so I don’t road rage anyone. Then I’m good.
Burns
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Indeed, but people that know about cars, and can price out value are a minority of the public. Frankly, an informed buyer is not a demo any car company's marketing and sales department want to deal with.
An informed buyer is the bane of all high pressure sales tactics. It is much harder to take advantage of all the smoke and mirrors involved in sales, if the buyer can see through the facade.
Hateyou
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The last couple times I bought a new car I frustrated the hell out of their financing guys. I just kept saying no to all the additional BS they were trying to sell. They’d try to work through the math with me to convince me paying $1k now for all this service stuff will save $2k over the life of the car. No. What about this extended warranty that will save money if something happens? No. Wait, you know what I think I can work down the price of that warranty. No. Oh hey I forgot I have this coupon under my keyboard to make it 25% off, it’s the last one I have. No and lol.
The guy who did the coupon thing was so mad I laughed at the scam.
You’re right though, they get a lot of people. My brother in law spent an extra $10k buying all kinds of warranty shit on his giant truck. He said yes to every thing they offered him. It made me sick to my stomach when he was telling me about it.
RobXIII
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Yep ran into ALL of that when I bought our 'Give up on life' mini van from Honda
Finance guy even made a 'mistake', when I called him on it, he actually said that it's only another 50 a month, not worth starting over. They started over. I was there sooo long, like 5 hours.People may shit on Tesla (their problem solving / CS really sucks), but I was out of there in 8 minutes. Most of that was me going through my QA checklist before taking delivery.
ShakyJake
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I loved my Fiesta ST. I traded it for a Mustang GT, and sure I have a shit ton more hp and torque but isn't near as fun to drive. I really wish Ford didn't axe all their cars here in the U.S.
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Burns
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Every time I think about Dealerships, I think about a movie from 1999 called Suckers. If you want to show people how dealers work (and high pressure sales in general) it is a go-to movie.
It is a comedy in the same vein as Super Troopers, in that, the underlying plot doesn't matter, and it is just a vehicle for the antics.
It was recommended to me by sales guys and the couple of former dealership employees I've worked with have said it is fairly accurate (in terms of real sales techniques/meetings). Things have changed a bit since the 90's though, and I think Carmax really made traditional dealers "refine" their experience a bit.
Unfortunately, it is a hard to find movie. Here is a low def first 4 min of the movie, as a sample:
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I hate sales people with a passion. That clip rustled my jimmies. The full movie would probably cause me to have a seizure.
rhinohelix
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I sold cars for a year and a bit as a day job near the end of college in 94?, and I was trying to get some real work experience beyond night clubs and gyms. I went to one of those "Do you have what it takes?" training seminars at a dealership and got hired. I found that I was good at it and enjoyed the process but hated the experience. The people you really connected with, who you really wanted to get good deals, were always the ones who paid the most. The biggest assholes, who fought the hardest, who ground you down and made the process the most painful, those people got the best deals. So much of the process is about psychological misdirection, about tricking you, about convincing you of the value of the vehicle we wanted to sell you that you wanted to buy. There is a fair amount of inception happening as well. I read so many books on the psychology of selling and sales.
The people that paid the most were always the happiest with their cars, though. The people who got the best deals were never happy regardless, without exception. I never saw anyone fight for a great deal and then turn on the smile. Everyone who thought we were screwing them still thought that even after we would give them absolutely amazing killer, verifiable jaw dropping deals.
It was really a three tiered system, there were green new people, who were still in the sorting process, who had passed the entry test but had yet become "car salesmen", there were always a gaggle of these folks. Then there were journeymen who had been around awhile and had skills but hadn't built a home anywhere, didn't have repeat customers and a reputation at a dealership. Almost all of these people were broken in some way. Then there were the Established Ones, who were dealership royalty, who sold 20+ cars a month based upon their repeat customers and their word of mouth referrals. For these guys, the latter, they seemed to walk on air and made tons of money effortlessly from the outside. Sales seem to fall from the sky. They would split deals because they had too many people coming in at once to deliver to; they never had to talk to a random stranger ever and break sales records if they didn't want. Only two or three of these guys per dealership.
In the 90's so much of the money the dealerships made was in the backoffice, financing or service, they really didn't care how much gross we kept, since holdback maintained profit even if we sold at invoice. I know the F&I guy, who was friends with the sales manager (a hard guy who took a shine to me that I followed to a couple of stores) was making 150K+, dropping 1k a night a strip clubs etc. which seemed like big money back then.
At one point about a year in I sold a car to a young couple and really "knocked their head off" as the saying went, I think with their trade I made like $2000 over sticker on the car. They were great people, just married, just getting started, actually just a little younger than I was, and we just really connected, and they just took the first written offer I brought back from the sales manager. It was a ridiculous deal which made me a fair amount of money, people came out and congratulated me, but I felt terrible, like my mouth was full of ashes. The sale actually broke me, instead. I quit shortly after. It was a great learning experience about a huge number of things but I would never "sell" anything for a living ever again.
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Sludig
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There's enough issues w/ the veloster that I was turned off by it, waiting for updates, or some kind of more mature platform as Hyundai starts getting busy with performance models lately.
Lanx
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Lanx
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i've been with my wife for close to 25years, i've not only said she's asian but she's cantonese like me, which i didn't expect b/c i fully thought she was korean... anyway.
the only time in our 25years together we have ever spoken chinese in public is exactly this
our dealership was the dumbest bunch of fucks, not b/c we hated them, but b/c they gladly took in the hyndai sonata and valued it at 4k
that sonata wasn't gonna run another 50miles, lulz
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Hateyou
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