Discount on 2011 Prius?

When you say discount....do you mean from MSRP?

 

I can't tell you about NY, but when I bought my 2011 a couple of weeks ago I got them to come down about $500 off MSRP.

Basically, I gave them an out the door (OTD) price that I was willing to pay and told them that if they wouldn't sell me a car for at least the OTD price that I wanted, that I would just wait until their inventory was high again or find a dealer close by who would make me a deal. I also went about $250 lower on my OTD price that I told them than I was really willing to pay.

It seemed to work, they made a sell and made some money, and I got a car for a price what I thought was fair.

Pretty much, don't let the dealer know you want a car right away. Tell them that you'll just wait out the shortage until the prices start coming down. If they really want to make a sell, they'll come down off of MSRP.

 

Not NY, but for comparison I saw this ad in today's paper.

San Jose Mercury News | San Jose Automotive & Vehicles - Auto Dealers - Toyota Sunnyvale

 

$500 below seems pretty high. Have you looked at truecar.com that's a good place to start to get an idea of about where dealers in your area are cheapest.

 

We just bought a 2011 Prius IV with the solar roof option last night - for $1488 under MSRP and a doc fee of ~$400. You might have to work at it, but I found three different dealers in the Atlanta area that were willing to sell at $1000 or more under MSRP. That said, the other 13 weren't quite as generous. There were a handful of dealers at or just below MSRP but most were willing to give $300-$600 below w/o much work. There seemed to be a lot more Prius IIs and Prius IIIs so the deals might be different there...

 

In the San Francisco bay area, I got an offer of nearly $2,000 off
of MSRP for a 2011 Prius III (with navigation package). Is this a good deal?

 

If you are a AAA member go to their website where you can build & buy a car. Around here their price is invoice + $500.

 

I would consider it a pretty good deal, but then again, we weren't looking for IIIs/3s so I don't have a good frame of reference. There were only 10 IVs/4s in the southeast that met our requirements and our timeline was very short - so I felt pretty good about the price we got. If there are lots and lots of IIIs/3s in the Bay Area, then you might be able to get them to lower the price even more. If not, then you might be doing as well as you can. Time, distance, and flexibility are your friends - the longer you're willing to wait, the further from home your willing to drive to buy, and the more flexible you are with colors/options, the better your chances are of getting the price you want.