The lowdown on list prices
Who says nobody pays retail anymore? If you recently bought a Chrysler Crossfire or Mini Cooper, odds are you paid full freight.
But few vehicles on the market have the cachet to fetch sticker price. And as hefty rebates, zero-percent financing, and other offers have proliferated over the past two years, the marketplace for cars has taken on the din of a Turkish bazaar. Manufacturers often raise prices along with discounts and flash rebates on and off weekly or even daily. "These programs change so fast," says Mark McCready of the auto-shopping Web site CarsDirect.com, "that you can't keep track of them."
To help steer through the confusion, U.S. News teamed with CarsDirect to compile a list of mainstream vehicles and the actual discounts offered for each, on average--after all the rebates, trade-offs, and slick talk. The complete sortable list, available at www.usnews.com/ auto, has a few limitations. The data are for the Chicago area, for instance, so trends may vary slightly elsewhere. Still, the discount list is a revealing look at which cars are hot and which are not--and how far some manufacturers are willing to go to move the metal.
Deals on wheels. Not surprisingly, vehicles from Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler are usually marked down much more aggressively than Hondas, Toyotas, and other imports (tables). But the degree of discounting indicates just how tough a sell some domestic vehicles are. Ford is already discounting the brand-new Ford Freestar minivan by 13 percent, a steep giveaway for a product just out of the gate. Competitors like the Toyota Sienna and Nissan Quest--both also new this year--don't need to be so solicitous. The Sienna sells for the asking price, and the Quest goes for about 5 percent below sticker. Chrysler's Pacifica wagon, another newbie, is off an even deeper 16 percent.
Some carmakers tend to be very discreet about advertising deals because steep price-cutting often suggests distressed merchandise. You'll never catch Porsche publicizing giveaways on its new Cayenne SUV, yet dealers are marking it down 3 percent. Toyota traditionally offers very limited incentives on the bestselling Camry but earlier this year quietly began offering zero-percent financing. And the discount data indicate that dealers have been shaving Camry prices by as much as 12 percent. Bob Schnorbus of J. D. Power & Associates figures Toyota has sweetened the deal to guarantee that the popular sedan ends the year with more sales than its perennial rival, the Honda Accord--which comes with less generous financing terms and is discounted a mere 9 percent.
Premium prices. Other companies are holding the line on price to protect their upscale image. Sales of Mercedes's M Class SUV have declined by more than 25 percent in recent months, yet the average discount is only about 5 percent. The data also help identify brands on the move. Newer Cadillac models, for example, have surprisingly strong traction for a domestic brand. Dealers discount the CTS sedan just 4 percent even though it's been on the market for three years--stronger pricing than tough competitors like the Lexus IS300 and the Mercedes-Benz C Class. McCready predicts the sassy new XLR roadster could even demand a premium, given Cadillac's plans to produce an extremely small number of the $75,000 two-seaters.
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