i'm in the automotive industry dude... what do you think people do with the money they get from trading in a car? they put it down on a new (or used) car... which is precisely why you would PUT a down payment on your first car... so you can transfer it to another car later on when you want to sell it....

i'm not saying that EVERYONE has 10-15k cash to put down on a 30k car... however, if you have a 15k car thats paid off, and you trade it in, then in essence you're putting down 15k on the 30k car...

 

So am I, dude. I must be seeing the vast majority of that 10% too because most of my customers don't have paid off trades or put down that much money. The few that do have paid off cars, its usually some 6-10+ year old car that is worth a lot less then the figures you are tossing around. Again, I ask, where did you get that statistic from?

 

You guys might flame me for this but at first I didnt really like the new 06 sti front end but It actually grew on me and I really like it now, especially in the new steel gray color

 

"For those of you who didn't buy an EVO because of how you think cars are doing, you just missed out big time. If you have any understanding of how Japanese conglomorates/Zaibatsus work, you would know that is into a lot of other industries and those industries always help keep a float the ones that are not doing so well. Completely opposite of how U.S industries work, ones that are not doing so well are sold/shutdown."

"The only things the STi has going for it is the stock better lit gauges, the shift light/sound and side impact crash rating."


Regardless of how a Japanese Company works, no corporation is going to indefinitely keep injecting capital into a company that is losing tens of millions of dollars a week like Mitsu was for a while there. As for your comment about the Sub, it makes about as much sense as your previous comment.

 

you can clearly see what i do in my sig, being that we get alot of new and used car business from the dealers in my area, i have close relations with the salesmen... over the past 9 years i have NEVER heard of someone buying a car worth over 10k without putting some type of down payment.. whether cash or a trade in... so the 90% comes from the basis off of my personal knowledge.. if it's off, it's not off much..

you also defeated yourself by saying "its usually some 6-10+ year old car that is worth a lot less then the figures you are tossing around".. is it because they did not originally put large enough down payment or because the car had horrible resale value? i also specifically said 3 year loans... you are an idiot if you buy a car for a 5+ year loan.. most warranties last only 3 years (36k miles) unless you purchase the extended warranty(which could cost hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands)....

 

Yes, like my 05 with a 5yr/60k mile warranty, haha. I put nothing down on any car ever. I also don't believe that you have never heard of someone buying a car over 10k without a down payment. That's absurd...

 

I still can't wrap my brain around a $500/mo car payment. I guess it's whatever works for you, but I can recover from a $5k down payment in a few months. Plus that $5k goes toward the car. I drive off the lot with a $30k car that I owe $25k on. If there's a financial crisis and I have to sell, I won't be upside down on the car. The same can't be said if you drive off the lot with a $30k car that you owe $29.5k on. I mean just driving off the lot drops the value of the car down hundreds of dollars. Being married to a huge payment for 36-84 months could potentially kick anybody's butt. People will default if their financial situation goes sour for a while. Just ask Mitsubishi how their "0 down & 0% financing" promotions of 2002 and 2003 panned out for the company.

 

 

what ever you do DO NOT GET THE HUGLY *** 06 STI!!!!! get the 04 or 05! I llike those my self.

 

You could/should love the STI also..
BUT if you ask me, i would NEVER trade in my EVo`s against an Subaru

 

Great point, but it is EASIER to trade a car in with equity (so to speak), but the smart thing would be to sell it yourself and pocket the cash.

EASIER meaning it's convenience, our society pays for it. People lease for convenience. You pay 4 years on a car for 30k and trade in after 4 and get 15k, but that's a huge downpayment on your next vehicle, it's convient.

 

I guess I'm part of that 10% because the mind set for society is TO get a lower monthly payment. That's how we operate. We strive to get the lowest monthly payment at all costs until we actually run the numbers...

I will say this again, if you need to put a downpayment on a vehicle JUST to afford the monthly payments you shouldn't be buying it simple as that.

Enjoy your car

 

That is ludicrous. I do this for a living, I don't get this information second hand like you do and then make up BS facts to support my opinions. "It" is off, and by a whole bunch.

Why don't you just crack open a black book and look at typical trade in values for any mainstream American or imported car that is that old or with high mileage? They aren't typically enough to make a 33%-50% down payment for 90% of car purchases like you're are saying. A lot of those nice paid for trades get sold privately or passed down to the kids. It does happen from time to time, but not the majority of the time. Most people I deal with have negative equity, and still don't have cash or the desire to put it down. So it is up to rebates and incentives and overallowing on loans to get them out.

I don't care what you said, the majority of the loans I do are for 60 months, a lot of them are 72, and a few are 84 months. I could probably count on one hand the number of 24,36 and 48 month loans I personally did this year and I sold/will sell about 150 vehicles in 2005. I wish you could meet them all so you can call them idiots to their faces. I gaurantee there are plenty of them that are a lot smarter then you. Then I could look at all the cars my whole delaership sold and it would be a similar tatio. Then, I could call my friends that work at Ford, Honda, Toyota, Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, Nissan, Chyslker, Cadillac, etc dealers and they'd have similar stats to ours. Mitsubishi has a 5/60 basic warranty and 10/100 powertrain BTW, and buying an extended service contract on a used vehicle is a good idea IMO, we sell quite a few of those too on a variety of brands.

The trend I have observed over the past five and a half years is that cars are getting more and more expensive, but the average joe's salary hasn't grown to match it hence longer and longer terms.

 

I understand your point, and if people did better at saving up cash for an emergency, the other scenario wouldn't be a problem either. You either pay now or you pay later. If you had put down that much cash at the beginning, and you are struggling to make the payment and have to sell the car, perhaps you shouldn't have bought that much car in the first place like bennine is saying, or if you still had the cash you put down, maybe you wouldn't be in that crisis. Plus, if you bought gap insurance, didn't put any down and in fact rolled in negative equity and the car were stolen or totalled, insurance pays the book value of the loan, gap pays the difference which is the negative equity + your deductible! Imagine if you had put a bunch of cash down in that scenario - you'd never get that back.

Sure it does, that's why there are arguments against ever buying a new vehicle. Since loans are simple interest, if you decide you want to pay extra you chop off the back end of the loan without penalty. It doesn't have to last that long just because you signed for that much in the beginning.

0-0-0 was for one year only. 0 down, no payments and no interest for the first year, then it jumped to like 8.9% for even a well qualified customer. The problem was giving those loans to people who weren't qualified for that much vehicle to begin with. From time to time we do have 0% for the life of a loan on a car. Most times it is really short like 36 months, but we've had it for 60 months and even 72 months a few times, why anybody would want to put any money down at all in that type of situation is beyond me. IF you did have a trade, just cash it out, you can stick that money in a measly bank savings account and earn like 1-2% interest and still be better off then cutting your payment 16.67 per thousand.

 

LOL! Dude Ok, whatever ... lets just agree to disagree. Firing Pattern LOL! thats a good one. You do realise almost all the engines out there fire half their pistons at 180 deg of revolutions from the other half. Do you have any idea about the principle of sound? How sound waves are formed? what wavelength, amplitude, frequency, resonance, reflection mean?

Here is a test you can conduct, run both an inline 4 and a boxer 4 with open headers (aka no headers) and tell me if they sound different ...

Until then please keep the signal to noise ratio down.

Also as to why, people take long loans or put a lot of month down. Some do it to keep their money payments low, some do it because the interest rate they get is low. I have to agree with GPTourer on this ... Ever heard of the present and future value of money?