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You probably pay more for your car than for anything other than your home. Though personal finance mavens advise us to buy used vehicles, many people — including myself — feel more comfortable buying new. But how can we be sure that we’re getting a good deal, that we’re not getting ripped off?
Fighting Chance is a web site devoted to giving consumers the information they need to negotiate a good deal on a new vehicle. Founder James Bragg writes:
Our “Big Picture” analyses for each auto nameplate are updated monthly. They tell you whether sales are up, down or sideways for the vehicle(s) you’re shopping, and whether the average dealer sells two per month or 32. They also tell you what other customers have reported paying, in relation to the dealer invoice price, to give you a frame of reference for your negotiation…
Most important, Fighting Chance shows you exactly how to use this information to make dealers bid competitively for your business. Our information package has four pages of instructions on how and when to execute the “fax attack,” along with sample faxes for leasing or buying. If you follow our instructions, you will find that even cars that sell well are relatively easy to deal on.
For $35, Fighting Chance provides an information package containing:
- Complete current pricing data for the vehicles you’re considering.
- A biweekly report covering current dealer incentives, which will help you plan your purchase.
- A big-picture analysis of how manufacturers and models are doing in the marketplace. This also includes information on dealer holdback and actual transaction prices.
- A package of insightful articles, including:
- How to use the information package
- How to avoid the big leasing rip-off
- Straight-talk about incentives
- What they don’t want you to know about product quality
- Should you buy last year’s leftover model?
- Much more.
- A customer support number to get your questions answered during the process.
I’d never heard of Fighting Chance until a GRS-reader e-mailed the link to me. However, my wife and I used a similar method when we bought her last car a decade ago. It worked like a charm. No hassle — just a quick test drive and the signing of the papers.
If you’re planning to purchase a new car, you owe it to yourself to check this out.
Tomorrow I’ll post a first-hand account from somebody who saved thousands of dollars using the Fighting Chance method.
This article is about Cars, Planning Tuesday, 13th June 2006 (by J.D. Roth)
June 13th, 2006 at 7:37 am
Anyone tried Consumer Reports’ pricing service [ http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/pricing/index.htm ]? It sounds similar and is only $14. Includes:
• Consumer Reports Bottom Line Price — the price where you should start negotiating (including current national rebates, unadvertised dealer incentives, and holdbacks).
• Dealer Invoice Price (provided by the manufacturer to the dealer).
• Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) — what the dealer wants you to pay.
• Invoice and MSRP Prices for all factory-installed options & packages.
• Different Trimlines for your selected models.
• Consumer Reports’ predicted reliability ratings (based on feedback from over 800,000 car owners).
• Consumer Reports’ Recommendations on how to equip your car or truck.
• Current Safety Ratings based on our analysis.
• Alternative Vehicle Choices — so you have genuine options to choose from.
• “Best Deal” Negotiation Advice.
• Online Buying Advice
(I am not affiliated with CR other than being a long-time subscriber.)
USAA will also handle negotiations of new cars if you finance through them. I generally trust USAA and have always been please with the service and products I get from them, but there seems to be a bit of a vested interest in paying a higher price if they are financing the deal.
June 13th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Consumer Reports is a good resource. I used it religeously to determine probable reliability when I shopped for a couple of cars in February. I also used Consumer Guide as an aide in determining which cars I wanted to shop for with regard to driving characteristics.
But the Consumer Reports package will not get you the true bottom line price because it doesn’t tell you where a dealer is in relation to his sales targets. Therefore, you don’t know what price you can get in relation to dealer incentives. The Fighting Chance package helps enormously in helping you determine what a realistic price is by listing actual sale prices in various regions throughout the country. The information and methods used by Fighting Chance are far superior to the advice offered in CR’s “Best Deal” Negotiation Advice.
June 13th, 2006 at 9:24 am
I second (or third) the recommendations for FightingChance. We just bought our new 2006 325i for $30 over invoice in March using his techniques (I wrote a long entry detailing the process we went through on my own site).
We also originally subscribed to Consumer Reports’ New Car Buying Kit, but the method advocated by CR and other sites on the internet is a bit flawed. They claim to have the “true” price of the vehicle, which is impossible, and FightingChance explains why.
One of the key differences between FightingChance and the rest is that you never make an offer but simply set up a competitive bidding situation by speaking to the right people at the dealership at the right time. I would go so far to say that as long as you are looking to buy a car for which a competitive situation can be set up (which should be true for most cars out there), and do this at the right time (he explains when this is), you’ll do better using the FightingChance method than any others out there.
(I’m just a happy customer with Fighting Chance and am not affiliated with it, nor do I gain in any way from recommending it.)
June 15th, 2006 at 7:11 am
[...] Yesterday I mentioned Fighting Chance, a service designed to help consumers get the best price on a new car. Here’s one reader’s first-hand experience using their techniques. VinTek writes: [...]
September 18th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Car Dealerships make a larger portion of their money off financing the vehicles than they do the actual vehicle- so make sure you have your own financing lined up before you head into buy a vehicle. You’ll piss the F & I guy off, especially if you don’t add any of the extras at the end- but you’ll save yourself a lot of money.
October 17th, 2006 at 11:11 am
[...] The best way to buy a new car [...]
March 5th, 2007 at 7:45 am
[...] The best way to buy a new car and A real fighting chance [...]
March 5th, 2007 at 9:45 am
I’m guessing the “fax attack” they describe is similar to one that I read about in one of the Motley Fool books. It might have been, “The Motley Fool Investment Guide : How The Fool Beats Wall Streets Wise Men And How You Can Too” but I’m not sure.
Anyway, it appears they have it up on their web site as well. It a series of several steps that starts here: http://www.fool.com/car/car.htm and gets to the fax part of the process in Step 12 (http://www.fool.com/car/car12.htm).
I’m not a big fan of the way fool.com pushes newsletters these days, but the car buying process they outline strikes me as a fantastic idea.
May 4th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Count me as yet another satisfied FightingChance.com customer. I was going to suggest this site after reading a few other car-related articles here, but to my surprise you’ve already mentioned it. Using Bragg’s advice I paid about $4500 less than the local dealership wanted for my new 2007 Dodge Magnum.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Another excellent method is to have the Dealers compete against each other through email bidding, as described in this article:
http://www.auto-broker-magic.com/newcarpurchase.html