With the muddy as the Mississippi River numbers jive involved in car sales I think someone would have to sit down with all of the paperwork and spend a few hours hashing it all out in order to figure out who paid what.
One of the aspects of a car sale is to make the customer feel they got a deal in some way.
Since Caddyman has posted another quite plausible story about this vehicle and seeing as how the dealers I’ve worked for generally did not like to see a demostrator with more than 500 miles or so on it, there’s always the possibility this could have not only been a demo but also a short term rental or loaner vehicle.
Just theorizin’…
Being a bit curious I decided to take a look at eBay and a few completed auctions with similar dealer offered vehicles because I consider eBay to be a bit more real world.
There were several 2012 Ford Escape Limiteds with around 0 miles (meaning new, not demos) offered for about 25k. There’s a current running auction for a 2012 with 13 miles with a 24 something price tag.
There’s also a number of them in the 29-30k range with no takers, past or present.
The Car I Bought Last Fall Was A Year Old With 10,040 Miles And Had A Suggested Retail Of $23,990
(I Looked It Up). I Paid $14,000 For It, Less Than 59% Of The List Price. That’s Over 40% Off !
I buy manufacturer’s “Certified Pre-Owned” cars. The new car bumper-to-bumper warranty was extended (to 48 months/48,000 miles) because it was certified. Of course the car had the remainder of the 60 month/100,000 mile drivetrain warranty. All warranty coverage ran from the original In-Service date.
Granted, it took me quite a search and considerable haggling, but I found this deal, locally at a GM dealer. The car was the color I was looking for (white) and being used or pre-owned meant nothing to us. It will be used up. It was purchased as an “appliance” for my wife’s commute. She has already put almost 30,000 more miles on it.
“What’s a proper discount for a new “demo” car?”
I buy cars with a few more miles than you did but, like I said, I plan on buying slightly used cars and paying less than 2/3 the list price.
I feel certain that you are referring to the Valiant, dagosa. It was a work of art. It was well maintained but driven mercilously. The route to New Orleans had grooves that fit the wheels in 1968. At wide open it would E-V-E-N-T-U-A-L-L-Y REACH 100 miles per hour and it held that speed from Canton to Baton Rouge regularly. If someone says they saw me stopped on the Pontchetrain Causeway on Dec 27, 1968 don’t believe a word of it. I was at AFEES at noon on the 28th.
@CSA
You’d have loved the Cx-7 one dealership was trying to sell me last year. They told me it was a '09 dealer demo and could be titled new, but it had over 19,000 miles on it. Even my insurance agent was confused on that one
Be glad you passed on that one bscar2. No way on Earth could I ever see a dealer putting 19k miles on a demo.
There had to be a shaky story behind that one.
I wasn’t sure how the digital odometer read(pictures on their website), so that last digit could have been the decimal point, but a phone call to the salesman confirmed it was, indeed, he full amount. That was the last time I ever talked or emailed that dealership. I still wonder if my uncle(he recommended the salesman to me from his experiences) didn’t get screwed over by that guy.
