Summer 2004 Edition

Two Smart Fair Lawners A Fair Lawn family recently bought a minivan.   Big deal, you think.  There's at least ten minivans on my street.  But when you read how they bought it, you'll realize you can learn something from them.  Fair Lawn News can publish their story of how they got a great price.  Most magazines and newspapers can't, because they rely on advertising from car dealers and car manufacturers.  A notable exception is Consumer Reports, they can publish very reliable information because they do not except any advertising at all.  Note that although Fair Lawn News doesn't rely on advertising, we would really like to have more sponsors, so we can continue to provide outstanding coverage on the important issues facing our town.   Story from Fair Lawn News Readers We never bought a new car before and we didn't want to get taken, so we read Consumer Reports and a couple of web sites on how to buy one.  1st. We figured out what we wanted. Our friends liked their Mazda minivan, it fit our family's needs, and it received good ratings from Consumer Reports.  We picked out the LX-SV Model (the least expensive model).  We picked out two different colors that she liked (silver and sage green). Then, we picked out options.  We decided we only needed one option, rear air conditioning. 2nd. We went to carsdirect.com and fightingchance.com to get an idea about prices.  The latter web site taught us how to negotiate.  3rd. We went to the Mazda Web Site. You can actually look at a dealer's inventory. We found all the dealers within an hours drive of Fair Lawn who had the Mazda LX-SV in Silver or Sage Green with Rear A/C in stock. 4th. We called up those dealers and asked for their fax number and the name of their Sales Manager. 5th. We faxed the Sales Managers a letter.  In the fax, we listed the dealer invoice after rebate and with options ($19,012).  We also listed the manufacturer's suggested retail price after rebates ($20,675).  We had gotten this price information from the two web sites we had visited. In the fax, we wrote that we were looking to buy a new minivan within a week from the dealer who came back to us with the lowest price.   This is the Secret to getting the best price: Fax the letter towards the END OF THE MONTH. Salesmen get all sorts of bonuses that are based on monthly sales. 6th. Within a day or two, most of the dealers called us back.  Interestingly all the quotes ended with a $62 (as in $19,562) 7th. We ended up buying it in Westchester.  Two dealers in Long Island had similar prices.  We were surprised that the New Jersey dealers quoted higher prices than the New York dealers. We ended up paying $18,562 for our minivan. That included everything but New Jersey sales tax. The salesman confided that we got such a good price because it was the end of the month.

Note:  Pricing and options have probably changed since these Fair Lawn News readers bought their minivan.