Still charging Premiums? (Orange County, CA)

I found the dealers north and south of the LA-Orange County Metro area to be more civilized. Google for Toyota dealers in Ventura, Simi Valley, Oxnard, Santa Paula/Fillmore, Santa Barbara, Victorville, Hammer Toyota in the SF Valley ... all said they sell the standard packages without leather seats or wheels added on. I know that Hai at Santa Barbara Toyota is getting cars and doesn't have a long waiting list. That's about 150 miles from you, but its a nice drive up a very pretty coast.

 

Longo Toyota El Monte - MSRP NO ADD ONS - NO Problems

 

I have called every single Toyota dealership in San Diego county. I was simply looking for a particular color to see (not buy) and asked about inventory for someone here. When price & procedures came up, the overwhelming consensus was $500 deposit and they sell at MSRP. Most do NOT add extras down here, either. Car mats are the only extra that get included at every dealer I spoke with when the price/delivery issue came up. I made those calls last Wednesday and hardly anyone had any inventory. By Friday afternoon, those that I gave my phone number to or the ones who already had my number in their system were calling me left and right with cars suddenly on their lots.

My car is due to arrive as early as this Friday along with 5 or 6 other ones. My salesman said they are all spoken for and they probably are. But... I am beginning to think that this whole county receives their shipments on Fridays. When we were trying to test drive the 06 back in late 2005, we got the call from our salesman that he was expecting a shipment on Friday and he would call me Saturday to confirm the cars arrived. Turns out they arrived late on Friday and the service guys had gone home, so they did their thing the next morning and we were able to test-drive that afternoon. Some plastic was still on the car and the odometer had 1 mile on it. Salesman said that was part of the service team's checklist...to drive it in a certain area, which was one mile.

Anyway, my point is if you want a Prius and do not mind the drive to San Diego, you can probably find a car here this weekend. When I called every dealer in the county, I used Toyota's web site and they all popped up. If you need a zip code, use 92024, which is Encinitas (North County Coastal). There were three entire pages when I did this last week.

GOOD LUCK!

 

You should check out Toyota of Temecula. I just bought my #6 there last week. They had 1 left, and 3 other used ones. It was a pretty straight forward deal. I contact them through the internet sales link on their website, and because they had more than 1 in stock at the time, they offered me the Prius at $500.00 below MSRP. I know it seems far from the OC, but it would be worth the trip if they had in stock what you are looking for. Besides, I drive from Temecula to Orange County everyday for work, surely you can do it once if it means scoring a Prius

 

Keep an eye on craigslist.com too. The dealers will often post cars on there for a quick sale.

On mine they tacked on the floor mats and the rear bumper aplique sp? My concern was getting the car, not a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff, I would have bought anyhow...well at least the floor mats.

 

What I have done to get my hands on first on my 2006 Prius with package 8 is that I have called almost 50 dealers which came up close to my zipcode on toyota.com/dealers website and called each one of them to see if they have any car readily available. I told them I am interested to take the car on MSRP but not willing to pay any thing extra. Some of them took my number and some asked for a deposit of $500-1000 dollars which I paid for 4 dealers or so. I ended up getting several calls when 2006 Prius started to come in all at MSRP price and I had to choose which dealer I had to go with among the choice of dealers I had. Then once I brought the car at MSRP all I had to do was call those dealers and get my deposit back and tell them I got this car through an alternative dealer and they must refund this initial deposit. Good luck and hope this helps.