My MA contacted me and offered to get me out of my lease a year early and into a new MINI at very favorable terms. He claims that resale is very strong on 3 year old MINI's with factory warranty remaining (mine is '07 with 26,000 miles) and that the price on new MINI's has not increased much. I'm guessing it is some kind of sales ploy but wonder if any of you have had a similar experience?

 

I have seen a few posts here on NAM addressing exactly the same issue.

 

(Just joined here), but wanted to mention my wife just got an email on their awesome financing right now and we decided to trade in our '07 for a new '10 Mini over the weekend! They paid off her loan balance on our trade in, so we brought no negative equity over when getting into the new loan... Basically, our payments stayed the same and we have a new car! And our '07 had 72,000 miles on it, but my wife had bought the extended service contract (up to 100,000 miles) which I think helped our cause! Either way, we got a great deal!

 

It is MINI's way of keeping you making payments to them. I would assume you took a new 5 or 6 year loan out. I'm not saying that it is bad but it keeps you paying them for the life of another loan.

 

Probably is the optimal time to trade. People seem to be more comfortable buying used if it is still in warranty.

 

5 year loan, yep.

Well, we use the Mini as a commute car, so the 72,000 miles was concerning us, and they had good financing now, so whether it be now, or in 2 years from now, we would have bought another Mini anyway...

Besides, there were a few problems that had arisen on the '07 that were out of warranty stuff (heater was not working, digital display was not showing up correctly, gas pump was acting up, etc...), so getting back into a (commuter) car with a warranty was a big benefit... And since our monthly payments didn't go up any, why not right?

 

Sounds good to me.....

 

I emailed the MA and asked him to just buy back my MINI and get me out of my lease if they were so interested in getting cars for resale. He wrote back that they had run a promotion the week before and had taken in a bunch of used cars so were not interested at this time -- maybe in 6 months. I'm feeling a little second-class because our invitation came after that event. I guess it was a sales ploy as I originally suspected.

 

They were fishing for customers. Nothing more nothing less. It was not to benefit you, just them. You have a nice MINI might as well be happy with it.

 

it's a shame more people dont sell their own cars.. You get more for your "trade" and the buyer doesn't get stuck trying to negotiate a deal with a used car salesman.

Nothing burns me up more than a dealer who has his head up his but and won't budge on a price of a car that I know he has major margin in. In a down economy used cars is where dealers make their money. Might as well get in on the act... I sold my Acura for more than private party, but less than dealer retail, and my buyer couldn't have been happier...

 

I'd rather trade in a car and lose a little than deal with used car shoppers... Such a hassle and everyone low ***** you.

 

only problem is that you usually don't just "lose a little" this way, you lose a lot.

 

Yep..

I am no car salesman, but I have sold my last 2 cars on my own.

1997 BMW 328I with 135000 miles. Dealer offered $4500 on a trade. I got $7500 from a private party (this was in 2006).

2004 Acura TL with 51,000 miles. Dealer offered $11,000. I got $15,000 from a private party (this was 3 weeks ago).

 

Only if you're not willing to (not do not like to) negotiate.

Yes, when we went to the dealer, they low balled our trade, but after about 30 minutes of back and forth, we got what we wanted.

The first rule of car buying is be willing to walk away from the deal. Now more than ever, cause ALL dealerships want to make a deal, so they will do whatever they can to make it. If they don't want to give you what you want, you need to be willing to walk away and/or go to another dealership. It can be a little tiresome, but you get what you want in the end!

In our case, we didn't *need* to buy a new car, we just wanted to upgrade if the terms were right. Luckily, they ended up giving us what we wanted! It sucks to have to play their game, but we felt like we got a good deal in the end!

 

I got a grand more on trade in on an '07 Mazda 3 hatch when I bought my VW than the highest private party offer or Carmax offer over a 2 week span.

 

The main advantage of trading your car in with a dealer is that you save some sales tax on the new car. Say they'll give you $10k in trade. That's actually $10,830 in AZ because you save 8.3% tax. I traded in my Jeep when I bought my Mini 3 years ago. He probably gave me 2 grand less than I maybe could have gotten privately, but I saved $800 in tax and the car had some "problems" with it that I wasn't ready to pay to have repaired. As soon as I drove off they were his "problems" .

 

One exception to the rule doesn't change the rule.
Maybe you didn't try hard enough selling it privately? There are a myriad of reasons why your private sale could have not yielded the results you wanted.

If you're trying to say that in general trading in your car gets you more $$$ than selling it privately (as per your example) it's simply not true.

 

Once my 07's lease was about 18 months old i started to check out "new" mini's. After checking them out about once a month for 6 or 7 months we struck a deal that was good enough to get me to stop leasing and get a loan. Its kind of nice knowing i am gonna own the mini and one day have no payments!

 

I know that selling private yields more typically, but one shouldn't always expect that to be the case.

I listed the car on autotrader, craigslist, recycler, had a for sale sign on it, had it up on all the mazda forums, ect. ect. I'd say that's trying hard enough.

 

Agreed, I had my M coupe on the market for 1 year. Little bites here and there. Also after 10 years, banks don't give out loans to used cars so I had to trade it in to get rid of it.