Got the call whilst reading PriusChat!

:computer:
well, what are the chances of that! just 5 minutes ago I was browsing the 'posts since last visit;' the phone rings, and I'm told my silver #6 has arrived (waiting since late 1/04, paying $500 under MSRP, also have $700 Toyota certificate). so, on saturday, my '04 driftwood #0 gets traded in for $20k...exactly msrp when it was purchased in late 2003! 14,000 free miles!

finally got my desired grey interior, side airbags, smartkey, and vsc. grudgingly paying for (at wife's behest) nav, "upgraded" stereo. sort of happy to be paying for homelink mirror and bluetooth.

rob

 

yeah! and you pretty much hit the numbers, except for +186 for the mats. I made a $500 deposit back in January, which I'd pretty much forgotten about. also, I don't think the 700 certificate comes off the price before calc. of sales tax...(will find out on Sat.)...I believe the cert. is just like cash toward the deal. the trade in does come off first, of course.

my wife just got her college degree (tonight!) and a new job (last month!), so we're also going to finance the 5k or so for a couple of months thru Toyota, just to get the $400 college grad. rebate. Might as well work all of the angles.

you'd think I wouldn't care too much, already owning a Prius, but my heart sure jumped when I got the call!

thanks
rob

 

I was wrong about the above, at least the way my dealer did the transaction. They took the $700 certificate off of my cash price, along with my trade-in allowance, before computing the sales tax. So, I saved $45.50 in taxes.

I borrowed the entire $5274 I owed them from Toyota Financial, to get the College Grad Program. That gave me the $400 Grad rebate, which the dealership applied on the spot toward the car (in other words, I would have owed them $5674 if I was paying cash instead). They gave me 3.75% APR, which would cost me $320 in finance charges over the 36 months of the deal if I don't pay it off early.

I mentioned to my saleswoman that I planned to pay the loan off in just a few months. She said if I'm close to 9 months of payments, wait until after 9 payments had been made. That would qualify me as an "Encore" customer to TFS, which means that if I borrowed against another Toyota in the future, I'd get .25% off of the APR, even on a deal like factory 1.9% financing.

One thing I noted about this 2005, compared to the 2004 I traded in, is that I used to keep my 2004 at 68-69 degrees and the heat would catch up pretty quickly, with the fan speed decreasing before too long. With this car set at 68, the fan is running at medium or medium high constantly; I had to put it as low as it will go, 65, to get the fan speed to go to low.