June Highlander incentive

[dball711]

Just noticed Toyota is offering a $500 customer incentive on Highlanders from now till 7/5/11.

[Loudog2]

I took the 1.9% for apr instead back in april.

[gchu]

It was $750 or 0% (5 years) at the end of March for 2011

I'm actually surprised they are offering anything considering the whole supply vs demand relationship....

[becks]

Becasue of the supply/demand situation (casued by the tsunami) car companies decided to use the problem as a way to mark the vehicle prices up. Bad move on their part. Month of May sales tanked, and now they are re-thinking their greed move.

[gchu]

Not create any heated debate, but I had thought Toyota announced their planned price increase prior to the Tsunami...

And from what I understand, the price increase isn't retroactive, meaning you can find vehicles built prior to the price increase with the "old price". I know I ran into that with Nissan - there were two trucks at the dealership - identically equipped (down to the color). They were priced differently because of when they were built - one was ahead of the price increase, the other after.

The best way car companies "mark up" their vehicle is reducing the incentives.... That's one of the heaviest tracked metric in auto - average spend on incentives/vehicle. Not only does it impact their net profit, but also the resale of vehicles.

Personally I think the month of may sales (in units) for 2011 vs. 2010 isn't that far off. It shows a 3.7% drop (41.1K) from prior May sales of light vehicles, but May 2010 had 26 sales days while May 2011 only had 24 (the wall street journal has the details). Toyota accounted for 54.5K of the drop.. followed by Honda's 27K unit drop.

I haven't seen days inventory figures, but I'm gathering this is related more to vehicle availability than the price increase. There are vehicles at dealers, but not the right mix/options. I've noticed that when I was shopping, there were a lot more limited than base ones... The limited are very nice and I would have loved to buy one, but couldn't justify spending that much more over a base or a SE. I would have definitely spent the extra on a SE but they didn't have the color I wanted in stock and I didn't want to wait as it was the last day of the $750/0% incentives.

[arabianobsession]

^Correct. Lots of dealerships still have cars priced pre-increase.

[mctommy]

Originally Posted by gchu

It was $750 or 0% (5 years) at the end of March for 2011

I'm actually surprised they are offering anything considering the whole supply vs demand relationship....

I believe that depends on region and car models.

We bought ours in mid to late march and took the 1.9% for 5 years. It was either that or $750 off.

[arabianobsession]

Chicago Region is 1.9% for 60 months or $500 cash for June. There's also some pretty decent lease rates as well. The only models here that are offering 0% are the Camry (gas) and Tundra.