First time buyer - purchase advice please!

We've had a 2005 Prius since new, bought by my wife before we were married. She received a decent discount after casually mentioning where she worked (civil servant in politics). There was nothing iffy about it, she didn't do it on purpose, the salesman didn't call anyone or anything, just simply offered a good discount in the hope that she might say good things about it to colleagues I guess, "oh, well, perhaps I can reduce by another €3,000" or words to that effect. Incidentally, she only became interested in the Prius after having a succession of European car manufacturers tell her that hybrids were evil, a fad, and that there would be no future in them...

Anyhow I digress. I need some advice. After a little under 10 years of issue-free running with our Prius, we recently had to replace the suspension and tyres (only previous works were replacing a wing mirror after vandalism and another tyre set at about 6 years in). We figure this would be a good time to replace and the release of the Gen 4 is a happy coincidence.

I've never personally bought a car from new before. Everyone I know tells me that you don't pay ticket price. So, what would be a good deal? Free accessories? A 4-figure discount? Both? I actually don't mind the price so anything would be a bonus, but obviously I'd like to get as good a deal as possible. We're not made of money but we like a decent car because we occasionally go on long treks all over Europe (from Belgium to Croatia, Spain, northern Scotland, etc.).

In Belgium they only offer 2 models at retail - the 'Comfort' (basic) and 'Lounge' (premium). One is basically standard, no frills, the other comes with 17" wheels and, as far as I can see, all tech upgrades including JBL premium sound. We're looking at the Lounge model because of the tech features, we're hoping this car will last us another 10 years and figure these features will become standard on most cars before too long so might as well jump on the bandwagon now. We'd also like to keep our red colour but this comes at a €595 premium for some reason (all other colours except white are €475).

Ticket price €34,260
"Emotional Red" (what a name...) €595
No additional tax or fees except perhaps a licence plate transfer fee of < €100.
(€1 = $1.12 currently)

So, any advice regards getting a good deal? What should we aim for? 5% off total price? Free upgrade for red? Maybe some of the exterior options like the chrome surrounds? Are these priced high so they look like a great offer when given away for free? As I say, no idea how this works so any advice would be appreciated!

Incidentally, any idea of the trade-in value, in Belgium, for a 2005 Prius with new suspension/tyres and ~190,000km (~120,000 miles) on the clock?

 

Certainly worth a try, not sure why that never crossed my mind.

 

That sounds like fun. All good ideas everyone, food for thought. Thanks very much.

 

Just came back from the dealer today. We employed the "call all dealers" technique recommended by @bisco and @goldfinger above, offering them the chance to give us their best price before we head out to our appointment at the main dealer. Only two of them chose to engage - the rest were typically very Belgian about it and didn't want to play. One of the dealers gave us a good vibe as well as a noticeably different discount over the other, but we played it cool and ended the call uncommitted. We decided to drop by this morning to continue negotiations. The guy we spoke to was out on a test drive so the manager stepped in, which itself might be a tactic on their part for all I know.

We kept quiet about the trade-in initially. So, this was the deal we negotiated (all EUR €)

Prius Lounge (premium) in 'Emotional Red' 34,850.00
Accessories we wanted 254.22

Discount 4365.43 or 12.44%

At this point we mentioned the trade in. He took a look at our car, checked his valuation book, made a call and came back with a value of 3500.00. As @goldfinger had suggested we'd researched online for completed sales of the same model in similar condition/miles/etc. and the average sale price was about 2700.00, or 800.00 lower than his offer, so we didn't even bother negotiating on this.

With trade-in, the total discount on list price is 7865.43 or 22.41%

We also have the option to try and sell our car before we take delivery of the new one, so it costs us nothing except perhaps a little hassle to see if we can get an improved offer from elsewhere.

I'd like to thank everyone for their input - I'm not sure if we got the best deal or not but I'm very confident it's better than the one I'd have managed without your help.

Delivery in July

Thanks again!

 

Belgium.

 

It's difficult to say, I don't particularly follow the motor press or anything like that, but our friends and family have always reacted positively to our car. It seems an odd thing to say but I never get in someone else's car and say "ooh, nice car" but that's the sort of thing we get all the time when people travel with us. My wife's best friend considered buying the last Prius but ended up going for an Audi instead, purely because she didn't fancy an automatic.

Over the last few days I have checked out press reviews of the new model and they all rate it very highly - a couple were positively drooling over its improved performance. I'm pretty sure that the Prius is not just seen as a niche option for environmentalists any more, if it ever was. It's definitely mainstream and we see plenty of them about. Though Renault, Peugeot and VW dominate here, Toyota seem to be doing well enough, for example there are more than 10 Toyota dealers within 5-6 miles of me and not a single Ford one. You can't move in the UK for Fords but they're nowhere near as common here.

Belgium is a nation of savers. Credit is widely available but few seem to bother with it compared to the UK where everyone has a car on finance. So there are a lot of old cars on the road here, people squeezing the absolute last drop out of their investment. The flip side is that there are also a lot of premium cars as well, I suppose thanks to the high-salary jobs at the European Parliament, NATO, lobbying companies, etc.. It's not uncommon to pull up at the lights in Brussels and have a clapped-out Peugeot 205 from 1990 creep up at one side, and a €120k Audi RS6 Avant at the other. I doubt Belgium is a typical car market