52k miles, "high mileage"?

AH! Then thats an entirely a different situation then.$17,900 for the Prius, plus $1,000 tax, call it $500 for the titling and registration, $300 for the negative equity...we're at $19,700...

Did you pay $2,300 for the warranty? If so thats where they made their money...thats a terrible deal on a warranty.

 

AStuke, how much did you pay for the warranty ?

 

Great minds think alike lol, see posted at the same time Sage...

 

You are forgetting the loan payoff which was about $4000 more than the car's auction value.

She did OK. I wasn't thinking that she was screwed on the warranty, but wondered if it was discounted for the miles already on the car. My WAG is that between the CPO premium and the extended warranty she spent around $2000. I have voiced my opinion about that quite enough.

 

I don't think so...the OP can clarify but

Prius=$17,900
Malibu=Given almost full payoff, so if the payoff was $5,900 as was previously stated and she rolled over $268.57, they gave her $5,631.43 for the Malibu.
So goes into the loan, $17,900, $1,000 in tax, registration (guess $500), the $268.57 in negative equity for the Malibu, and then the rest should be the warranty...

If so, aside from the warranty I say she did great on this deal.

 

I bought a used 08 model last year in April 2010. It was basically a stripped down basic prius model with less than 13k miles and white paint. I paid $17K out the door, everything. No trade-in involved. It's got 33k miles on it now and still works perfectly. In fact, I just got the noise cancellation filter installed for free by my local Toyota stealership under warranty. I wanted a factory fix for this issue, though I had already built my own custom ground loop isolator with switchable input for my XM Roady XT and Sansa Fuze.

Honestly, I wished I had bought a Prius with more miles to keep the purchasing price lower.

 

SWO, The loan pay-off is not the value of the car.

AStukes, thanks for adding additional details. You got a fair deal, and hopefully a great car that will serve you till 2030. Take care of your new baby.

 

Bout time you told us the purchase price

It sounds like you got a decent enough deal, especially with those taxes. $17,900 is fair for that in the market now and $1k in taxes brings it to $19k, even ignoring warranty.

That is the negative equity that swo3es is asking about but OP says only $268 in it.

As long as astuke keeps this for a while I think she did fine. Certainly possible to do much worse, and look at that oil hit a 2.5 year high today :0

 

Equity is market_value - outstanding_loan.

The car dealer treated the car cost and trade-in value as a package; he could just as well said the Prius cost 15,900 and trade-in is 3900. You have to independently find the local market value of either car to calculate if the deal was market competitive. I keep posting (and people keep ignoring) that the auction value of the MAXX is about $2000.

I think OP knows that her deal was ok; she was concerned about the comments of people saying that she paid too much for a car she will dump in 2 -3 years. Our collective response to her is 'expect the car to last a lot longer than that!'

In a way she is fighting her own habits as much as her friends advice, since they all seem used to dumping cars by 150k miles. Maybe that is reasonable behavior for Chevy cars, but it is in general throwing money away for Prius owners. She bought a more expensive car, she will be well served by taking advantage of its superior reliability by keeping it much longer than 150k miles assuming bad luck does not supervene.

 

You traded in the old car *and* paid the dealer $22K? You got reamed. Undo the sale if at all possible.

Next time, save up the purchase price in advance so that you don't have to borrow anything. And forget the extended warranty; that's almost like giving the dealer a thousand dollar tip.

 

The auction value is meaningless, because the OP did not sell her Malibu at auction. The dealer will sell it at auction, and they'll get $2k or so for it, as you stated.

Of course they used the trade in and the purchase as a package...thats what they do...usually to the detriment of the purchaser. Basically, they sold her the Prius for full asking price and sold her a warranty, but in return for selling the Prius for full asking price, they paid off approximately $4,000 in loan balance they won't get back...when you add the $2k they'll get for it at auction to that $4k...you get $6k...the loan payoff.

Had she not had the trade in...essentially she bought the car for about $16,000. Instead...she paid $20,000 and they paid off $4k in negative equity on her behalf.

So...essentially she has indeed financed the $4,000 in negative equity as we had originally surmised, the dealer just buried it in the purchase price of the car so as not to arouse TFS. Happens all the time.

My advice about the gap insurance still stands...

You'd be correct if her trade wasn't a car that was $4,000 underwater. Essentially she paid $18,000 for the car including tax, title & registration...and an additional 125k warranty...thats not a bad deal.

The additional $4,000 to bring it to $22k is the negative equity left over from the Malibu.

 

When you isolate each component of the deal, and realize that in the case of the Malibu the dealer will pay the lesser of what he can buy the same car for or sale that car, you end up with a $2k value.

This is correct -- about $16k. Eight pages of discussion for a bit of arithmetic.

 

Just don't tell your friends that it's in the shop they'll be like sharks on chum.

 

Ok let's look at the positives Alyssa.

1. The Prius is a very reliable car and should see you through that 5 years with very few problems.

2. Given your trip you should be able to get 50 MPG fairly easily (after a bit of practice anyway). Based on your past figures I'm thinking you'll probably be going at least 15k miles per year. At 15 k miles you could save up to $1200 per year in gas compared to the Malibu. Even more if prices keep rising like they probably will do.

 

OK, so over the next five years, are you going to drive 10K miles per year or 32K miles per year, or some intermediate value? Your answer to that question will determine the amount of reassurance that you should receive regarding the likelihood of a significant repair.

If you are going to drive 10K miles per year (which results in a final odometer reading of 102K miles) then I would say that there is a 98+% likelihood that the Prius will not incur an expensive powertrain or hybrid system repair, given your adherence to the maintenance schedule.

If you are going to drive 32K miles per year (which results in a final odometer reading of 212K miles) then my guess that you will have a 30+% chance of incurring a sizable four-digit repair prior to the end of your five-year ownership period. Likely repair candidates include: traction battery, inverter, transaxle, air conditioning compressor, MFD. Of the items on that list, a transaxle failure would be the most costly, and if you must rely on dealer service you will probably be out $6K.

Smaller three-digit repair amounts should be planned for maintenance and repair items like replacing the engine coolant pump, engine and inverter coolant changes, transaxle ATF fluid changes, etc.