The Big Car Sale Has Begun

I haven't seen an atomic pencil like that in a couple of years... They blew this guy out of the water, it was hilarious.An atomic pencil is a huge set of first numbers, that is designed to blast a customer to the ceiling. For instance, with this deal the customer was looking to buy a $27,000 truck and the first numbers they showed him was a 36 month finance term with $8,100 down and monthly payments of $860.

For most customers this blows them away and they have to be peeled off the ceiling with a spatula, which is actually the point of the atomic pencil. It's designed to get a customers thinking up. For more information read my Car Buying Tip #19 - How To Negotiate With A Four Square.
You'll also find some tips for using the four to your advantage.

By the way, these guys here for the sale are really good and as long as we get traffic it will be interesting to see what I'll be able to report. I'm sure we will have some huge deals this week, so stay tuned.

A quick for those of you here for the first time, do not buy at car dealership big sales events. They are typically a big rip off and prices actually go up believe it or not.

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Big Car Dealership Sales Event

We have a big sales event starting at the end of August. I'm sure this one will have a lot of exciting stuff to report.

They are planning to send out like 50,000 mailers, do some big radio spots and plenty of print ads. They are also bringing in an entire team. The team will consist of a desk man, closers, finance managers and salesmen.

I'm sure this sale will do a lot better than the last, so stay tuned and I'll give you a play by play of all the deals. I'm sure this one will really open your eyes to what a rip off these sales events are.

In the mean time...

Take car and beware,
J the Car Guy

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Lender Review and Credit Breakdown

Especially Important For Bad Credit Consumers!

For those of you who didn't know or haven't had time, remember to check out my Lender Review and Credit Breakdown on how lenders see you. You can apply for financing to multiple lenders and get a better feel for what type of credit tier you will fall into.

You can find this here Car Loans. I tried to set it up in an easy to read bullet fashion and I think you'll find it pretty informative. It should save you a lot of time and frustration. There are lenders for both good and bad credit. Check it out.

For those of you looking to refinance, check out my other site EZAutoLoanRefinance.com it's really easy to refinance, the average customer saves over $60 a month and the best part is it's free. Apply today.

In the meantime...

Take care and beware,
J the Car Guy

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How to buy a car with negative equity in a trade

I have received several emails lately from customers in some pretty serious negative equity situations. One customer was told by a car dealership that she had $14,000 negative equity and there was no way that they could get her approved with that kind of negative equity. So how does she buy a new vehicle?

First off, I'd like to say that this is an extremely difficult situation and with this much negative equity will be tough to accomplish. It's all going to come down to finding the right vehicle that can absorb the negative equity and still be in line with the lenders loan structure.

1) You can put $14,000 as down payment.
Obvious one, but unlikely possible for most customers.

2) You can buy a new truck or SUV and finance with the manufactures financing arm.
Trucks and SUV's have some rather large rebates currently available on trucks and SUV's. Manufacturers are eager to move these units, so they are offering big rebates and flexible financing to help them sell. This obviously does you no good if you don't want a Truck or SUV, but unfortunately cars are stronger right now and manufacturers aren't offering rebates as big.

3) You can buy a late model used Truck or SUV.
These are selling very cheap at the auction and dealers are buying them, in some instances, for half of book value. Again, it does you no good if you don't want a Truck or SUV. There are some late model cars that come to mind that may also work in this scenario, the two that really stick out are Cadillacs and Pontiacs.

4) You can refinance and lower your interest rate so that more of your payment goes to principal.
This is probably going to be your best option. Unfortunately, this means you'll have to keep your current vehicle for awhile longer, but you may not have a choice. If you're not able to get a new vehicle with the above options, you're going to be stuck with the vehicle anyway, so you might as well have lower payments and make each one of those payments count. By count I mean have more of your monthly payment go towards principal then to interest. Refinancing is FREE and you could have up to 60 days to your first payment.

If you're interested check out my Auto Loan Refinance site. The average customer is able to lower their payments by over $60 a month and lower their interest rate by close to 4%.

You may be wondering how you'd be able to refinance your vehicle, but not be able to buy a new. Basically, let's say your vehicle has a book value of $28,000 and you owe $32,000, but do to current market conditions it's only worth $18,000 to a car dealership. Well most lenders are going to use the book value to figure how much they will lend and not what they sell for at auction. So it can be done. Of course, all approvals are OAC. If you are in an extreme situation like this, it certainly can't hurt to try.

In the mean time...

Take care and beware,
J the Car Guy

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Buy the extended warranty BEFORE the car breaksdown!!!

I can't tell you how many times I've had customers come straight out of service and pay some outrageous bill only to come over to my office and buy an extended warranty.

In fact, I just recently had a customer who did just that. She paid a $2,500+ repair bill and then shelled out another $1,400 for an extended warranty. If she had bought the warranty before the breakdown, the warranty would have more than paid for itself.

I asked why she hadn't bought one when she bought the car and she said when she bought the car it still had some factory warranty remaining and she was going to buy one once she got close to running out of the factory warranty, but never got around to it.

The extended warranty would have cost her less had she bought it while the car still had factory coverage and she wouldn't have had to put the extended warranty on a to do list, which I've found most people don't ever "do" until it's too late.

If you are the type of customer that buys extended warranties (which I always think is a good idea), just do it at the time of sale. It's cheaper and you don't have to remember to do it later.

In the mean time...

Take care and beware,
J the Car Guy

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