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Originally Posted by Austin Explorer
With the recent spike in oil prices has anyone noticed less willingness on the part of dealers to cut the price of the FEH below MSRP? My wife and I went shopping yesterday and one of the dealers found the perfect vehicle for us in terms of options at another dealer in state, but the offer price was less than thrilling, pretty close to MSRP.
On the one hand, I've seen some post on this board about the ability to beat MSRP as of late. On the other, Edmunds.com's "what others are paying" price for the FEH with the options we chose matches within a couple hundred of MSRP.
Has the tide turned again?
Robert
http://www.austinexplorer.com/
http://www.texashiking.com/ |
Hey, stranger! This is Shannon from
WildTexas.com! Small world!
The selection isn't terrific down here in San Antonio, but if you can find a Ford Escape Hybrid that suits you at a San Antonio area dealership, maybe you can get the same deal we did -- we paid just several hundred over invoice, purchased March 6, 2006. However, we qualified for the X-Plan pricing due to my husband's employer and we used his employer's free price negotiation service (though I had to provide them with the VIN of the vehicle I wanted priced because their skills on locating hybrids was sadly lacking. They first told us there were NONE, so I had to throw a list from fordvehicles.com at them showing the half dozen or so that were in fact at local dealerships at that moment.)
Anyway, 0% financing is now offered nationwide I believe and I think dealers are using that as potentially an excuse to be less flexible with the price, but you just can't let them do that.
If you haven't used it yet, use the following (link below) tool at fordvehicles.com to locate dealerships in your area and search their current inventories. The data's not absolutely fresh (for example, our '06 Ford Escape Hybrid was still listed for about 1.5 weeks after we'd purchased it), but it should help.
Ford Vehicles - Dealer Locator
** In the "You can also select a specialty to further refine your search:" dropdown, select: ESCAPE HYBRID CERTIFIED DEALER
The results are dealerships in your area or near it, closest first. Drill down and you get the VIN and window sticker for the particular vehicle(s) on a dealers' lot.
Dealers usually have more than what's listed, at least hybrid-wise, in my experience. We'd seen a Ford Escape Hybrid on the patio outside Gillespie Ford here in San Antonio, on display (for all I know, it's still there), but it never showed up in Gillespie Ford's inventory with the fordvehicles tool.
If I can answer any questions about the Ford Escape Hybrid, shoot! I'm a newbie owner to it, but we're loving it so far. It's been on one road trip from San Antonio to Dallas and back, and it gets lots of city mileage and some short routine highway trips. My miles per gallon this next tank should finally push my lifetime miles per gallon to 31-33mpg, if not better, and I know it can do better than that with a little finesse.