Ok sorry for the novel. But I want to help.
I've been involved in the purchase of four new cars in the last three years (my Evo in 2014, wife's 2012 Sportwagen TDI which was totaled by a red light running *******, her 2014 GTI which she didn’t like, then the 2015 Sportwagen TDI).
If I were to go buy a new car today this is exactly what I would do.
Go to the dealers website and pick out the car you want with the options you want.
Then go to
http://www.edmunds.com/tmv.htmlPut in the year-make-model-zip of the dealer - then on the next page click "no thanks I'll build my own"
Now plug in the options EXACTLY as you see them in the car from the inventory you want to go see.
*You'll probably always be stuck with the crappy rubber mats, VW ones wear out on the driver side within 20k*
Once you plug in all the exact options you'll get a final page. Print this out and bring it with you.
If you get the
Invoice Price then you did very well. The last three cars we got either at invoice or below. I got my Evo at Invoice minus the destination fee. The VW dealers wouldn’t budget on that fee.
If you end up seeing another car the price will be off and it will be harder to calculate. You may want to build the car twice in TMV, the one you are looking at and one with all the options, then you can remove them to correspond with another car and still get accurate numbers. If the calculations are off the dealer will look at your price like its in another language.
Now if the dealer is going to sell you the new car for less, they are going to try to make up for it by giving you less on your trade in, so expect that.
As far as trade ins go, in some states, such as the state I am in MD, the amount they put down on the new car from the trade you don’t pay taxes on that amount.
So lets say the GTI is 30k, and they give you 5k for your car, you pay taxes on the balance. So in essence the 5k they give you is actually 5k plus the tax rate, so if its 6% they actually gave you $5300.00. For smaller trade ins that isn’t that big of a deal, but when its 20k plus that matters.
If I were you I would wait until the dealers started getting the 2016 models in. It is nearly July and it won't be that long. With the 2016 models they'll have the driver aid packages that will brake for you if you are about to hit something. They will also have Apple Carplay, if you are an Apple user that is really REALLY nice. The Google map feature for navigation is worth it in and of itself. Real time traffic and updates. Regular nav sucks hard comparatively.
https://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/So you can either get the 2016 model with the new gadgets or get a better deal on the 2015 models they are trying to unload. Either way it’s a win-win if you can wait a few months.
As far as your Yaris.. man if you aren’t in a rush it may be worth it to clean it up, do a little maintenance, put a cheap set of tires on it and sell it on Craigslist/Autotrader/Cars.com. People are always looking for those cheaper cars for their kids. If the dealer offers you a small amount then fk it, walk away, sell it private party, then come back with a envelope full of cash for your down payment. Oh and Endmonds TMV is very ugly plugging in used cars, use Kelly Blue Book, or just look on autotrader within a 100 mile for Yaris models and see what they are going for private party.
Oh and another thing, this has worked for me every time we've gone to get a car. When the sales guy comes over and hands us the numbers we say we need to talk about it. Then we sit somewhere in the showroom and talk about whatever for 15 min. The sales guy starts to get nervous and will come over, and I'll say just a few more minutes, then we'll talk about nothing for a while longer and every time this has yielded either 1k off the new car or added 1k for the trade in. Just don't be rude, just act like you are really unsure about that price. Works like a charm.
Good luck and let us know what you do.
Cheers,
Justin
