My Mom is looking for a new vehicle so we went and looked a a Mini Cooper Countryman All 4. She really liked it! She said it was fun and had more personality than the Acura TSX wagon that we drove before hand!
I thought the Acura was OK but something I would never buy!

One question I have is, we would probably custom order a Countryman to get exactly what we wanted but what will the dealers position be on price. I have seen that some dealers wont give you any price break and you have to pay MSRP, is this true?

Thanks!

 

if you do your homework on the Invoice, etc you will find you can work a 'deal' with most dealers. If not, shop at the next. The amount off will vary, but you can def pay less than MSRP, even when ordering. A dealer may want to give you a better deal foe something on the lot, but you will see with MINI, that most cars are actually ordered(made to order).

 

Custom vs off the lot usually doesn't matter. Its very difficult to get under MSRP on MINIs. But this helps them hold their value.

If you are in an area with multiple dealers, that certainly helps. MINI USA does events every few months it seems and provides rebates on orders placed in a certain time frame.

If you belong to USAA or Costco, you can see if there are any qualifying dealers in the area.

 

Costco is about $1100 off MSRP if you can find a participating dealer. Most dealers will knock off at least $500 to $750 if you insist. Someone in TX on here said he got $1500 off on an ordered one!

 

You can also get them to throw in accessories like rubber floor mats, tint, stripes, etc in lieu of a discount. Giving you money off of MSRP costs them more than accessories. For example, knocking $500 off MSRP actually costs them $500, but them throwing in $500 of floor mats, tint, etc, costs them probably half that.

 

I don't know what the situation is today, but when we ordered our pretty well loaded CMSA4 (MSRP $34,850) back in April we checked with all 5 dealers here in New Jersey. One said they don't discount, three others gave us an initial quote of $750 off MSRP, and Mini of Monmouth quoted $1350 off MSRP. We worked with them and settled on $2050 off MSRP, but we did agree to pay their $249 doc fee, which of course is pure profit. We also were able to get the $750 Take Down Test Drive discount, which was funded by Mini USA and not at all by the dealer. Based on other posts, it seems like we did better than most, and the dealer still made more than a $1600 markup on our car. Seemed reasonable to us, and according to the on line websites like Edmunds and KBB we were able to do much better than what they termed to be "market value" or a "fair price". If you are in a area where you don't have mutliple dealers available to you, I would imagine you would be in a weaker negotiating position than we were. I think the dealer we bought from knew they had to give us a good price to get our business as they knew there are three other dealers closer to where we live. My favorite response was from the female salesperson at Mini of Mount Laurel. She told us that they can't discount Minis because they don't make any profit selling them. Either she was lying through her teeth, or it was her first day selling cars and that's what they told her to say...think it was the latter. Don't you just love car salesmen? :-)

 

Mine is custom order and I got 5% off without asking. Another dealership said 3% off and said still room for negotiation. I think it's because we have 5 MINI dealerships in our area.

 

I got $1000 off MSRP when I made up my CM-S with my dealer. I also got them to add 250 to my trade-in.

 

I know dealerships would prefer to sell off the lot. However, going into it, my MA had already told me that they had 12 allocations for 2012s still in the system that had not yet been built. So the way I saw it, whether it was on their lot yet or not, it would be at some point. So it was "technically" a vehicle in their inventory that they were going to have to sell.

When I went in to order and work out price, they initially gave me nothing. First try, they came back $350 off. I told them I'd have to think about it then, as I wasn't expecting to pay that much. Gave them a figure I'd be happy with, that would make me order right then, and two minutes later I was giving them a deposit.

So I ended up with almost $1,500 off. Considering that took less than 10 minutes, I'm sure I could have gotten more, had I tried. But I was happy with that.

 

The USAA discount is really good. I didn't do the car buyer option since I new I was going to order. I was just expecting 500 off, the discount applies to every option and adds up as you add options. I was able to save 1300 in the end with that discount.

On my trade in I went in with it appraised from carmax, MINI beat it by a 1000.

All in all the car buying experience was good, very low pressure, a lot like Saturn. My MA was helpful in the buying process.

 

i was just wondering about that. Thanks for the info guys. i may order one by the end of this year if everything goes smooth =)

 

Interesting folks! Thanks for the help! Hopefully My mom will have a Mini shortly!!!

 

just ordered mine. i got $1300 off msrp.

 

I got an email today saying 1300 off countryman S and 1500 off all4...

 

I was given $1750 off MSRP, and I am going to get the $500 discount from MINI Financial for their college grad program! Total savings = $2,250, oh and free window tinting!

 

I paid MSRP but got an additional $1000 on the trade. So it all even out. I Traded in our 2005 R50 and we took one of the not built yet orders and made it our own. All in all MSRP was $31350, and we will end up paying $30350 for our All4 R60.

 

My MSRP was $30,400 and I ended up negotiating it down to $28000. It helped that I played 3 dealers against each other and had them beat each others numbers until 2 of them refused to go any further. Oh and then I also got the $500 recent grad discount. That comes straight from Mini and the dealer had no problem applying it on the price we'd negotiated.

Bottomline, I feel you can negotiate on custom orders almost as much as you can on the ones that are already on the lot. Of course, if it's the end of the month or quarter, all bets are off.

 

We need more mini dealers! All the people who were able to negotiate down had other dealers close to compete with. I got mine from Mini of Portland. Closet other one was 150 miles away.

 

I would travel the 150 miles to save an extra $1000. When we ordered ours (see my post above) we did everything over the phone, email, and fax. We never went to the dealer except to take delivery.

Also tell the local dealer that you are not stuck on buying a Mini, and if you can't get the deal you want, you are going to buy a Subaru Forester (or whatever). Just make sure you are knowledgeable about the Forester because a smart salesperson will test you to see if you are B.S.ing him or her.

And if you do buy at the distant dealer like we did, you can get it serviced at the local dealer. I posted on this issue before we ordered ours and all the feedback was that there was no problem.

 

I paid MSRP because it was new and I was more concerned with getting it ASAP

 

I got $1250 off MSRP on a special order which, at the time, I thought was awesome since originally they only offered $750.

 

My custom order I got $1000 off MSRP, I got mine at Mini of Portland.

 

Don't let these dealers tell you they don't deal on Minis. That's a bunch of crap. We're not talking about Saturns here. I got my 2010 Clubman for $2,000 off of MSRP and could have pushed it further as he took my first offer. If you're ordering something that is not on their lot you should be able to get a better discount, because it's not costing them a cent to store and maintain while it's on the lot. Be prepared to walk away, but if you're patient they'll come back with an offer.

As an example, I special ordered a WRX way back in 2001. They were the hottest thing out there at the time. I had a dealer tell me no way they would deal, so I walked. Less than a week later they called me and told me they'd take $1,000 off MSRP.

As someone mentioned in this thread make sure you know what their BS doc fee will be up front. I've been suprised and shocked by that little game before.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.