TE
科技回声
首页24小时热榜最新最佳问答展示工作
GitHubTwitter
首页

科技回声

基于 Next.js 构建的科技新闻平台,提供全球科技新闻和讨论内容。

GitHubTwitter

首页

首页最新最佳问答展示工作

资源链接

HackerNews API原版 HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 科技回声. 版权所有。

New car buying guide: the algorithm (2021)

138 点作者 tpolm大约 1 年前

32 条评论

llsf大约 1 年前
Car dealership in US are in their own league. Coming from Europe it is difficult to appreciate at first. But when you see headlines like: &quot;Roma was purchased last month by Texas car dealership magnate Dan Friedkin, who is worth $4.1 billion.&quot;<p>Yes, that a Texan car dealership buying the AS Roma (soccer team, Italian capital).<p>When I came in US, I had no car, I saved money, went to dealership (Toyota) and pointed a used Matrix, test drive it, and said, I will buy it. The guy started to show me a long form (like 3 letter pages long form)... I said I do not want to make a loan. He looked at me like I came from another planet. I want to buy the car. He said that he can only accept a bank check. It was close to noon on Saturday, I asked if he could drive me with the Matrix to the nearest bank quickly, he reluctantly said yes. Maybe he thought I was going to scam him or something. He did stay in the car, while I asked for a bank check. He drove me back to the dealership. Unfortunately I had to leave the car, so they do a final inspection and prepare some papers. I came a week later to pick up the car.<p>Clearly the sales guy seemed a bit puzzled by the transaction. But there was no way I was going to drag a car purchase process like describe in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kutinden&#x2F;buyingacar&#x2F;blob&#x2F;main&#x2F;README.md">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kutinden&#x2F;buyingacar&#x2F;blob&#x2F;main&#x2F;README.md</a> (13 steps !?)<p>Now I see the why Tesla sells online. US dealerships have been fat cats for too long.
评论 #39508874 未加载
评论 #39508328 未加载
评论 #39509510 未加载
rmason大约 1 年前
Bought my first new vehicle in fifteen years. Here are the steps that I took.<p>1. Test drove four different brands<p>2. Went to six banks and found out the lowest interest rate I could get. Everyone told me that it would be at a credit union but instead it was a brand new bank that apparently was hungry to get new business<p>3. Emailed every dealer for the brand I chose within 225 miles.<p>4. You want to do one thing at a time. I wanted the price out the door. I avoided talk about trade-ins or financing. But I did state I was open to financing the vehicle with them if they were competitive.<p>5. Be very patient. The vast majority of the dealerships in the first round either never answered the email or quoted me over MSRP. I would engage with everyone who wrote me back. I would reiterate that I was ready to buy a new vehicle to whomever gave me the best deal. As time went on I responded with specific price I was willing to pay. There are forums for most brands where people share the prices that they were paying. So I had a pretty good idea what might get accepted.<p>6. I was getting ready to start shopping for my second choice. It came down to a single salesman who sent me dozens of emails. All the sales guys want you in the dealership where you&#x27;re on their turf. This guy kept dropping the price $500 at a time. He asked me what it would take for me to visit the dealership. I quoted him $1000 below his last offer - and he accepted! I made it clear that wasn&#x27;t a price I would accept, just enough for me to visit him. I wanted $1000 more I when visited the dealership.<p>7. I got a bunch of prices for my old vehicle online so I had an idea what it would bring. They quoted me on the high end of what I would receive but they wouldn&#x27;t budge on the new vehicle price. Eventually they agreed to add $500 to the price of the trade-in which I wearily accepted. Only to have them give me $400 of free mats so its obvious that I probably could have gotten them lower. However they had factory financing that was 1.25% lower than the best bank rate I received so I financed the vehicle with them.<p>Going online is the only way to purchase a vehicle. December I learned later is a really good time to purchase.
评论 #39510736 未加载
评论 #39508982 未加载
评论 #39510491 未加载
kylehotchkiss大约 1 年前
This whole thing is so annoying. I would much rather purchase my car from Toyota corporate and not have to buy a car with some random guy&#x27;s name stickered onto it because it sat on his lot and he got commission from the sale. I don&#x27;t care of the sales money evaporates out of my local community, it&#x27;s not worth the hassle.
评论 #39508657 未加载
grujicd大约 1 年前
The text mentions Seymours&#x27; Cray algorithm for buying cars, if you&#x27;re rich enough. However, it&#x27;s deleted from the linked page. To save you the search, here it is:<p>1. Go to nearest dealer, 2. Sit at nearest salesman’s desk 3. Buy nearest car 4. Go back to designing computers.
valval大约 1 年前
Keep in mind that going through this strategy will take you hours and hours, and with Software Engineering salaries it&#x27;s quite probable that you should instead rather be working on stuff that you&#x27;re actually good at with this time.<p>Or then you outsource this whole process to someone else and pay them a slight premium, which is what I would do. My time isn&#x27;t worth an email battle and spreadsheet acrobatics to save $3k.
评论 #39511772 未加载
评论 #39511823 未加载
评论 #39510030 未加载
评论 #39509038 未加载
评论 #39516500 未加载
dragontamer大约 1 年前
&gt; You do not want to use financing products that dealerships offer - they are worse than the ones you can shop around for. Get preapproved with your bank or and other bank and get the preapproval letter ready before step 5.<p>That seems unlikely to me, though this depends on which car company you&#x27;re buying from.<p>Take Ford for instance. A significant amount of Ford&#x27;s business is banking&#x2F;financing. Much like how the Dealership wants to sell you a car, Ford actively wants to be your financier and they&#x27;re competing against the banks to get your business.<p>Furthermore: Ford is known to sweeten the deal and offer financing-credits rather than straight $$$ off of a car. For example, you might find that Ford can offer 5% right now, when typical banks are going to be offering 8%. This is effectively Ford choosing a &quot;shadow-discount&quot; in the form of financing-incentive. They&#x27;re willing to lose money on the finance but gain a customer. Its a hidden negotiating tactic on top of all the other offers they&#x27;re doing to you. You might as well give the sales-guy the opportunity to offer you a financing deal.<p>-----------<p>But Toyota doesn&#x27;t have as big of a financing arm, and its more of an (expensive) service to the customer. You&#x27;ll probably lose money on Toyota financing compared to a regular bank.<p>I think its a good idea to be pre-approved. This means that you know what the &quot;fair&quot; % interest rate should be right now, and get a good idea of what &quot;shadow deals&quot; various car manufacturers are doing.<p>I know I&#x27;ve seen 1.9% APY deals in the market today. Financing is seriously just another step in this annoying negotiation process you have to normalize and account for.
评论 #39508322 未加载
评论 #39508543 未加载
评论 #39508242 未加载
zug_zug大约 1 年前
Car buying algorithm<p>1. Looks up nice new car<p>2. Realize a fancy new car is like $2-3k per MONTH (financing, insurance, etc).<p>3. Decide that there are about a million better ways to spend 2,000 a month (e.g. a $200 dinner every 3rd day, personal uber chauffeur, house-cleaners, etc)<p>4. Get used camry.
herbst大约 1 年前
1. Find out what you want from a car<p>2. Realize a 25 year old car does all that<p>3. Just pay the few thousand in cash<p>I may be weird but I don&#x27;t get why anyone would make dept just buy a fancy car they can&#x27;t afford?
评论 #39511115 未加载
评论 #39509293 未加载
评论 #39509224 未加载
评论 #39509581 未加载
评论 #39509459 未加载
SillyUsername大约 1 年前
In the UK last time somebody tried the hard sell with me was around 2012. I was in a Mazda dealership for a £20K car (~$25K USD today), after 45 minutes of pressure I told them if they weren&#x27;t going to give me what I&#x27;d asked (a more than fair quote for my old car) I&#x27;d buy elsewhere.<p>A day later I bought a better equipped Hyundai for the same price and a decent trade in. 2 days after that I get a call from the Mazda dealer asking was I still interested and they could work a better deal.<p>I had great pleasure in telling them I bought the Hyundai, best decision I ever made as it turned out the Mazda model I was interested in had windshield stress design defects causing them to crack and issues with the gearbox.<p>I still have the Hyundai and it&#x27;s survived 2 accidents from people driving into me :D
roydivision大约 1 年前
I have gotten into the habit of asking myself of any company &quot;What is their actual business?&quot;. This is invaluable in the IT world, but a useful tool in the real world too.<p>I know nothing about the car business in the states, but it seems to me after reading these comments and the article that the actual business of car dealerships is most probably - selling financing, and the cars are the &#x27;vehicle&#x27; for this.
评论 #39510831 未加载
评论 #39508916 未加载
kylehotchkiss大约 1 年前
Auto dealers sell to commercial customers as well and I&#x27;d like to think they don&#x27;t play this stupid game with them. Does anybody have any tips about how to pretend to be a commercial customer to maybe get better deals?
评论 #39509265 未加载
Balgair大约 1 年前
&gt; At this point you may start noticing a difference in dealer behavior: some of them are more open to negotiation that others. One of the reasons for that is that some of the cars are sitting on the lot for too long and they would like to get rid of them quicker to avoid burning money (keeping the car on the lot costs some amount each day due to insurance, parking space etc etc). This event is more likely in <i>the end of the month or in the end of the calendar year</i> (this post assumes that you cannot pick at what time of the year you buy a car. If you can choose, buy close to the end of December - there will be more inventory dealers will want to get rid of due to model line replacement).<p>(emphasis mine)<p>This part is buried in the whole document, but is probably the most important.<p>If you have some temporal wiggle room, go on the last day of the month. Not the second to last day, the very last day. Possibly after lunch if you can. You are going to get a <i>much</i> better deal.<p>Also, <i>never</i> buy a car at night.
ZeroGravitas大约 1 年前
One slightly related topic:<p>How is depreciation for cars calculated correctly when the dealers are adding this random markup and&#x2F;or cross subsidizing finance deals?<p>I originally started thinking about this due to stories about EV depreciation that make no mention of $8k plus federal&#x2F;state subsidies that the buyer received.<p>Is it as simple as some average second hand price vs MRSP?
评论 #39512979 未加载
lifestyleguru大约 1 年前
Are you seriously buying cars like this? Create strategies for &quot;financing them&quot;? It&#x27;s like someone is about to buy a knife but opens facebook and falls into japanese-superchef-damascus stell kitchen knife rabbit hole. Or am I the one who falls straight into the claws of kind of people who later buy AS Roma?
评论 #39508433 未加载
muststopmyths大约 1 年前
Last time I bought a car, I just messaged my credit union&#x27;s Auto Buying service with the make&#x2F;model I wanted. They told me the best price they could find and the dealer drove the car to my workplace once I set up the financing.<p>If your bank offer this service, you still have to figure out which car you want and what the fair price for it is. But those are minor roadbumps compared to haggling at the dealership.<p>There was no payment for the service or obligation to get the loan through the credit union. I did finance through them anyway since I intended to pay the car off pretty quickly.<p>TLDR: investigate if your bank offers a car buying service.
评论 #39508470 未加载
throwawaaarrgh大约 1 年前
Not sure who needs to hear this, but you can buy a nearly new car used and save 1&#x2F;3 to 1&#x2F;2 of the cost. One big benefit is you let somebody else find out if new models are lemons. Another benefit is you don&#x27;t need to haggle, as there will be many different options at different prices and you can quickly find out if the price is reasonable by checking KBB.
评论 #39508114 未加载
评论 #39508272 未加载
评论 #39508233 未加载
评论 #39508091 未加载
dt3ft大约 1 年前
No thanks, I’d rather walk.
评论 #39509620 未加载
mrb大约 1 年前
10 years ago I walked in a dealership to buy a used car and employed a negotiation tactic that I had recently learned online. The problem was that the technical price negotiation worked so incredibly well that I basically got (politely) thrown out of the dealership.<p>The tactic was simple: disarming empathy. It was a method presented by a hostage negotiator via this NPR podcast: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;transcripts&#x2F;167802325" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;transcripts&#x2F;167802325</a> Basically you agree with the salesman that whatever price they are offering is actually very fair, and in a normal situation you would accept it... but you apologize profusely saying you just can&#x27;t spend this much because it is too expensive for you. When he says such and such product quality justifies the price, you wholeheartedly agree with him... but you can&#x27;t afford this.<p>So that day I had identified a specific car I wanted, online, at a dealer in my area. I went in to see it in person. I explained I was ready to buy it today, got sat down at a desk with one of their salesmen. And he starts by presenting his price. I explained it&#x27;s a really good price, but I really can&#x27;t afford that, and asks if there is anything they can do to reduce it? After a while he says, sure, OK, what about this new number? And basically I keep doing the same thing over and over. I profusely thank him for reducing the price, but explains it&#x27;s still too much. Over a span of 20 minutes, he cuts the price down 5 or 6 times, up to a point where I finally say we&#x27;ve reached a price that I am able to afford. I don&#x27;t remember the numbers but I think we had started around $19k and got down to $16k. The salesman is mildly happy, but I distinctively remember him not being that enthusiastic. He said he&#x27;s going to get the paperwork ready to finalize the sale. He leaves me at his desk while he walks way. And a few minutes later he comes back, with a very sad look on his face, and apologizes while explaining that the owner of the dealership refused to let the sale close at this price. He says there is nothing he can do for me, shakes my hand, and remains awkwardly silent, then apologetically stood up to make me understand it was time to leave. I kept thinking the guy probably had just been yelled at by the owner about he could have screwed up the negotiation so badly.
评论 #39509235 未加载
评论 #39511512 未加载
decafninja大约 1 年前
Maybe I’m not the typical car buyer, but usually I do a ton of research beforehand and know the exact make and model and configuration I want prior to even making contact with dealers.<p>Then all I do is basically pick the dealer that is able to get me what I want, or as closest to it, at best price.<p>Sometimes this has meant traveling to a dealership in another state. Sometimes it meant ordering from the factory.<p>Then again, the cars I’ve always shopped for haven’t exactly been the likes of Camrys or RAV4s, so…
dvh大约 1 年前
If you think buying car is hard try buying tractor.
评论 #39509614 未加载
j7ake大约 1 年前
Why buy car on credit? Is there no &#x27;cash bonus&#x27; to be had by foregoing the financing?
评论 #39508913 未加载
评论 #39511876 未加载
Night_Thastus大约 1 年前
This guide looks exhausting.<p>I called a dealership. Asked if they had X car at MSRP. They said yes. I waited for it to arrive. I went there (10 minute drive), paid via check and drove out with it.<p>The worst part of the experience was the lack of color options.
评论 #39515365 未加载
speedgoose大约 1 年前
I test drove a few cars and I bought the car I preferred on the dot com of the car manufacturer.<p>I knew the displayed price was the real price.<p>Because I ordered it online, I could even return it up to two weeks after the delivery as the local law mandates.
评论 #39508468 未加载
petabyt大约 1 年前
I just bought a 80s pickup truck off Facebook marketplace a few days ago. Couldn&#x27;t be happier. And probably more reliable than some cheap cars being sold these days.
cavisne大约 1 年前
Reading this was awesome, but also makes me so glad I bought a Tesla.<p>What a nightmare vs a simple fixed price.
dr_kiszonka大约 1 年前
Good read! Any advice on getting a good lease offer for a sub $25k car?
resolutebat大约 1 年前
The opportunity to sidestep all this bullshit was a huge reason why I went with Tesla instead. No negotiation, no sales people, just click and order.
评论 #39508811 未加载
unstatusthequo大约 1 年前
Recommend reading Chris Voss’ book “Never Split the Difference”
vjulian大约 1 年前
I plan on buying a new car soon, likely a luxury brand, perhaps Lexus. It’s been 15 years since I’ve personally purchased a car. Are there services that will handle the process on my behalf?<p>Very genuinely—-I ask because my patience is thin, and I am likely to hurl expletives at the salesperson, especially if I detect tactics such as those described here. If the salesperson is slimy, then my verbal response is likely to be exceptionally offensive, as I’ll calculate for the most severe expression.
xyzelement大约 1 年前
This is a good article which maybe is a specialization of a generic negotiations algorithm. Not that much different in concept from how you deal with a rent negotiation, or figuring out which dealer to buy your Singaporean bonds from.<p>A thing that will control your outcome <i>a lot</i> is the dynamic of the car market itself at that moment, and what&#x27;s going on in the dealership. In my case, we bought our car in 2021 amid the chip shortages&#x2F;supply chain issues. I called a good number of dealers and got the following response:<p>One dealer had the car coming in a few weeks and can sell it to me for the MSRP. One dealer said &quot;we charge 1k OVER the MSRP for every car.&quot; The rest said &quot;we don&#x27;t have this car and won&#x27;t have it anytime soon.&quot;<p>In that environment, knowing the dealer costs and all that other bullshit doesn&#x27;t matter. You have one guy who knows he&#x27;s got a car that nobody else has, and if he doesn&#x27;t sell it to you there&#x27;s gonna be someone else who wants it that same week. You have zero leverage to drive the price down. We bought it for the MSRP and considered ourselves lucky.<p>In another environment, getting consistent apples to apples quotes is your key to driving down cost. Basically you are putting dealers in competition. If Bob has more cars than he can sell, his best outcome is to sell to you for MSRP, but his second best outcome is to sell to you at <i>all</i> vs having you buy from someone else. What usually happens in this approach is you understand the range of quotes, pick your lowest quote and then ask the dealer you would rather deal with if they can beat it. &quot;you are my local guy and I liked talking to you, would rather buy from you but you are a lot pricier than someone I can get from two towns away. Can you give me <i>your best quote</i> please?&quot; can do wonders.<p>The reason you get a range of quotes is that dealers face different environments. Bob may have a lot of car X and not a lot of people asking about it, and John may have sold most of his X and has a lot of interest. This can be for totally arbitrary reasons from what their area is like, to total luck of the draw and in a few weeks Bob and John may have their situations reversed, but at the moment Bob&#x27;s probably gonna be more open to giving you a deal.<p>A thing that also works is to make sure they know you&#x27;re a thoughtful money conscious person who is doing his due diligence will make them give you a better quote. I say straight up &quot;full disclosure, I am speaking to a few other dealerships to get a couple of quotes.&quot; That tells you that if they give you a high quote you will simply ignore it. If you seem naive and aren&#x27;t going to be equipped to shop around, they might give you a higher quote to see what happens.<p>The article makes a good point that you should negotiate (as always) one thin at a time. So lock in the new car quote separately from financing and trade-ins. Better get one number down and then work on getting the next number up.<p>Finally and this is key - realize your situation and the leverage you do or don&#x27;t have. If you don&#x27;t <i>need</i> a new car right away, and dealers have more cars than they know what to do with, you can really work on this to squeeze out another grand out of the deal. If you are in a situation like I described above where I needed the car and literally nobody had one, don&#x27;t feel bad paying the MSRP because <i>that was the best price possible under that dynamic</i><p>I can also say in general that people undervalue and under-study how to negotiate. Negotiation is often a collaborative thing where both sides win (the dealer wins because I did the deal w them vs their competitor, I win because I paid less) and people often fail to negotiate because they assume negotiation is a confrontation and it scares them. If you are a person that lives in the world where you&#x27;re not just ordering off a menu, taking a negotiations class or reading a book is a great use of time.
samcheng大约 1 年前
This BS is why I bought a Tesla.
评论 #39508309 未加载
weq大约 1 年前
New cars are built out of plastic and are thus limited to a 10yr life span, fullstop. Every one of them. Then you add electric to the mix, and in 5-10yrs ur gonna need to buy a new one, no matter the brand, because your battery will fail. The lucky ones get a second under warrenty.<p>I dont know, i stopped buying new cars once computers were added. I own a 95` landcruiser with 300k on the clock and i beleive it has another 300 which will basically mean it will do me for life. And the advantage of buying and old car, and learning todo the maintence yourself, is that not only do you save money from every angle, your car is on the other side of the bell curve where they start to increase in value again. In the 10yrs ive owned it, my car has increased in value by ~40%. Its made of metal, and is held together with bolts not glue. It will not dry rot away, and rust is easily controlled with modern epoxy paints. It will not go out of fashion given the thirst car collectors of the future will have the past.<p>My plan is to swap a hydrogen motor in i guess once mature the tech and consequently ban diesel.<p>This is from someone who in 2005 bought his first ~50k$ car over the internet, one click style, without seeing it in person from a used car guy (it was 2nd hand, 10k on the clock, ~10% of retailm had 2yrs warrenty). Thats really the problem with buying a one-click these days though, the people who buy them are too risk adverse to be without a warrenty or buy second hand. So they crash the value of their own investments because the others know what to expect with seconds on a modern car. The reason people sell cars after 1 or 2 years is many, in my country, leasing cars like this is maximises your dollar vs tax.<p>Any moden car: ~50k outlay, 10yr useful life<p>vs<p>i bought a 2002 rav4 with 400k for ~2k, 5~ yrs ago. Ive spent roughly ~500$ repairing different things on it in that time putting on ~40k because they reused the same parts for this car across many different years and models which means CHEAP CHEAP. It means parts have been copied and mass reproduced on a scale that sees me paying $30 for a waterpump and ~1hr to install DIY on the side of the road not $600 ~ $2k labour for a moden car that requires half the car to be dissaembled to even just see the water pump. And since your modern pump is made of plastic, and all the pipes are plastic, and the pipes are have special numbers of propritiy fittings.... well yes, you see why modern cars suck in terms of investment ratio.<p>let me show you that math. ~2.5k outlay &#x2F; 5yrs = ~500$ per year total cost. The car is now worth ~10-12k because people are so sick of modern cars and toyotas keep their value.<p>2nd hand, high milage, reliable cars (toyota&#x2F;honda) &gt; anything modern made in the last ~15yrs. The morphing from 1 or 2 modules per car, to 20-100 modules per car with tonnes more emmisions gear IMO is the worse thing to happen to cars since their inception. BUT it has given me a retirement plan ... im thinking about becoming a ECU&#x2F;electronics repairer once i get sick of tech :D All those modules are pretty much the same, they just allow you todo things via comment instead of lever. Once you learn the basics, its like hacking on VB or JS.
评论 #39509168 未加载
评论 #39512972 未加载
评论 #39508693 未加载
评论 #39508588 未加载