The Streak is Broken

[onerpm]

Over the past few years, I traded a 2004 Prius for a 2005, and then traded the 2005 for a 2006. I did this mainly to get the dark interior/NAV/Bluetooth when going to the 05, and then to get leather (and another new car) when going to the 06. As I had 11-month and 5-month waits for the new ones, the trade-in values were tremendous, and it was a no-brainer to do this (other than having to move my trailer hitch, etc. each time). And this is from a guy who greatly prefers buying 2-year old used cars!

I tried twice this year to trade in the 2006 for a 2007. This time around, I wanted to go from black to mag. grey, and skip the leather and NAV so I could aftermarket and get heated seats/black leather and portable NAV.

Yes, this is all very uninteresting. But perhaps the current trade-in offers are of interest:

1. In Feb. 2007, I was after a mag. grey touring edition, fully-loaded. This was before Toyota's price decrease on the top packages. This is in Twin Cities, MN, where there is still a month or two of waitlist. They were selling the car for MSRP (around $29.5?) minus only a $250 loyalty coupon. The best they would do on my trade (06, loaded, 9500 miles) was $24,000, so I did not do the deal.

2. A couple of months ago, my saleswoman mentioned that she thought we could try again, because of the Toyota price drop and her perception that used Prii prices were going back up. So, she put me down for a mag grey regular edition, everything but leather and nav (which probably made this deal harder to do). It came in last week. This time around, the best they could do was $22,000 for my car (which now has 11,600 miles), and discount the new one by $750 to about $24,800. Not worth it to me, as I would have had to spend the $2800 difference, plus maybe $2k more on leather and a portable NAV, to have a similar car.

FWIW. I felt that both trade-in offers were pretty fair.

rpm

[jamarimutt]

How nice to have so much money! 2004 for 2005, 2005 for 2006, 2006 for 2007...

[NoMoShocks]

I did more or less the same thing, due to poor make and model choices. Now I am on a 12 step program for buying new cars that the sponsors guarantee will keep me out of the showroom until August 2008, when the new designed 2009 Prius arrives.

For ten years, I had the good fortune to work within 2 miles of my work. There were two stop signs on the commute, and at times of bad traffic, I would have to wait for a car or two at the second stop sign. Then, the reorganization / re-engineering the company demon surfaced and I got laid off. Most jobs are 30 or more miles away, so once I took one of those, I decided I needed something more feul efficient than my 2003 Dodge Caravan, so I went looking at Prius, Honda Accords, etc.

At the Toyota Dealer in 2005, the sales guy knew nothing about Prius. They had ONE white one for test drives, and we sat down in it. He started to talk about how it was different from other cars, and then it wouldn't start. He said this one is broken (!'m guessing someone left the dome light on). No offense to the Superwhite club, but I was not that impressed with the astetics of the car (Mistake 1, as it grew on me later), and the fact that it didn't work sent me right over to Honda where I drove a Civic Hybrid and an Accord Hybrid.

I thought the 2005 Civic was a little on the small side, and I didn't think the MPG difference between the EPA 38 MPG Accord Hybrid and the EPA 34 MPG 4 cyl Accord was great enough to justify the etra $. But then in the end, Mistake 2 was that I decided to give up another 4 MPG down to EPA 30 MPG for a 2005 Accprd LX Leather with 6 cyl. engine because I thought I really wanted the leather.

Well, the Honda Accord V6 was fun to drive. Reminded me of a 70s car, but my real world MPG was 24 MPG. Probably could have gotten 28 if I drove conservatively, but I didn't have the Prius to teach me good driving habits. Then one day when I drove my Caravan to work instead, I realized I was getting 25 MPG with that, which was about the same or better than the Accord. Shortly after, I went looking for an Accord Hybrid, and ended up buying the 2006 Civic Hybrid for the EPA 49/51 EPA rating on that. This was my third mistake, as I neglected to revisit Prius again.

Well, the 2006 Civic Hybrid was a nice car, but the real world MPG on it was only around 38. I was talking Hybrids with a buddy at work that had a 2002 Prius, and when I said I got 38 MPG, his reply was "Why bother having a Hybrid?". This put the showroom bug in my brain agian, and now I am the happy owner of Lightning Green McQueen, so named becuase his cute little face reminds me ot characters from the PIXAR movie CARS.

Well, on the bright side, I did get some Tax Rebates and such.
Now I am off to find 10 people I have wronged and appologize.

[ohershey]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(onerpm @ Jul 31 2007, 08:45 AM) [snapback]488055[/snapback]</div>

<snip> This time around, the best they could do was $22,000 for my car (which now has 11,600 miles), and discount the new one by $750 to about $24,800.<snip>[/b]

11,600? I'm over 100k on my '04, and I'm looking to wait until the gen 3 comes out. I guess I'm from exactly the opposite school of car buying as you are - I can't understand why anuone would trade in a perfectly good car just to get a shiny new one. No personal criticism - just something I don't understand.

[hill]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mad Hatter @ Jul 31 2007, 02:19 PM) [snapback]488190[/snapback]</div>

11,600? I'm over 100k on my '04, and I'm looking to wait until the gen 3 comes out. I guess I'm from exactly the opposite school of car buying as you are - I can't understand why anuone would trade in a perfectly good car just to get a shiny new one. No personal criticism - just something I don't understand.
[/b]

Here here. By the time you calculate CA use tax? Plus registration? Yea. That little pile of cash suddenly became real money. My '04 stays, 'till it's much nearer the 150K warranty death. But, yea, what ever fills your baloon or floats your boat, or charges your nickel metal hydride batteries.

[onerpm]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mad Hatter @ Jul 31 2007, 01:19 PM) [snapback]488190[/snapback]</div>

11,600? I'm over 100k on my '04, and I'm looking to wait until the gen 3 comes out. I guess I'm from exactly the opposite school of car buying as you are - I can't understand why anuone would trade in a perfectly good car just to get a shiny new one. No personal criticism - just something I don't understand.
[/b]

that's 11,600 on the 2006. Short commute. I'll take a crack at more fully explaining why I did all these trades. (Up til now, I have been an alum of your school of car buying...I prefer to buy a car that's a year or two old and keep it until it drops dead.)

I bought the 2004 new for MSRP: $20k even. It was a driftwood, pkg. 0 TRAC with beige interior. It was not the car I wanted (in terms of options or int. color), but the only one I could find, so I bought it and then got on the local waitlist for a silver/gray pkg 9 (is that what it was #d then? NAV, anyway) at the same time and waited a year. When it came in, the dealer sold me the new car for MSRP -$500 (which was their policy at the time I got on the waitlist, although in the interim they quit offering 500 off). They gave me $20k in trade on the 2004, because at that time they could sell used cars for more than the MSRP of (unavailable) new cars.

How could I turn down having a Prius free for a year, and then resetting the warranty clock on a new one with the features I wanted? AND, I got the $2000 tax deduction again. (No, there was no 3-yr. recapture rule on that, contrary to rumor.) In Minnesota, we only have to pay sales tax on the difference between the new car price and the trade allowance. So, the only financial pain of doing this was paying for new tags again; fortunately, they are a lot lower than they used to be, thanks to former Gov. Jesse Ventura.

Similar story last year. I don't recall for sure, but the trade value on the 2005 was within a thousand or two or what I'd paid for it new. With the tax credit, I would have come out ahead on the deal (AMT took care of that, though.) The 2007 had some nice improvements, including the OEM leather and the nicer dash.

Anyway, the point of my OP was more about what you can get in trade-in value these days, YMMV.

rpm