Best time to buy a new car? Dec 31 or Jan 31?
 

I've heard that buying a new car is best done during month end or quarter end. Dealers are most keen to deal then.

We are into Dec now so I'm curious whether it's better to buy at year-end (i.e. Dec 31 could be the trifecta of month-end, quarter-end and year-end)--or wait until the January doldrums when (perhaps?) nobody is looking to buy a car. e.g. Jan 31.

There's no particular rush and the car may have to be special ordered anyways due to a desire to get the right colour combinations.

If it makes any difference, the brand in question is Mini.

Anyone with knowledge of the industry able to give me some advice re: timing of the buy?

Won't make a difference if the car needs to be special ordered. It only matters if you are looking at something they already have in their inventory.

My motto is ….if i want then i buy it now. How much could you POSSIBLY save on a special order brand new car.

true. financed a fiat abarth in august. now they have $4500 off the inventory for 2013. In the end it is still the same price. derp.

Time is now, the 14's are coming onto the lot and they wanna move the 13's. Might be picking up a new truck in a week or two here. Lots of rebates before you even start negotiating.

:suspicious: …was it a special order from factory?


Rebates usually apply to whatevers in stock.

For the record '14's start rolling into dealers inventory in like September and October.

The only difference now is a lot of dealers will have holiday sales or year end sales, but if you are special ordering a car then it makes damn near no difference. Especially because if you do it now the car you are going to be ordering is going to roll off the line as a 2014 car.

the promotion we scored on ended Dec 31 last year fwiw.

the dealer is your best bet for answers.

'14s started rolling in in early June. I picked up a '14 on June 26th.

If you are going for those brand sparking new gen. Mini, chances are slim to zero.

I am sure they will give out discount to get rip of those leftover older gen. Mini in their lot.

There will be a 2015 generation Mini coming to our shores, so they will be getting rid of their existing stock or demos.

The 'stang? weird since that wasn't even a new generation or facelifted.

I worked at infiniti and new generation cars would roll in beginning of summer. All other cars the new models would roll into compounds and such around sept and oct.

I guess it is completely dependent on the manufacturer. Nonetheless the point is still valid, its not like a switch gets flipped dec 31 and all 2013 cars become 2014...

It's never the best time to buy a new car.

Not sure where this whole idea comes from but none of the dealers I have ever worked for cared if it was sold on any particular date or time.

The best time to buy a car is when you can afford to buy the car.

Yup. It was delivered to the dealer June 10th, i took delivery June 26th.

Go own a lemon diesel truck and then tell me you still don't care about having a warranty haha

You can buy a year old car and still have a ton of factory warranty left. And someone else too the majority of the depreciation hit for you.

That being said, I haven't owned a car newer than my 01 A4. And I'm fine with that. As long as there is maintenance history I'm good with it and I can do all my own work on it.

I asked because I heard that it can be a numbers game. The more a dealership sells, the more recognition they get from the manufacturer (not sure what that means, maybe better discounts off of future cars?)

Or maybe money is owed to banks and landlords at the end of the month and it's better they get something now than later?