What about ordering an altima from the factory??

[Lurchdubious]

when you do this, do you pretty much do the deed & sign the papers at the time of ordering, or at the time of purchase? how much of a deposit do you pay? if you're trading a vehicle, do you calculate the trade value at the time of order, or the final transaction? if you calculate the vehicle's worth when you order the new vehicle, do you give up your trade vehicle & just wait around for the new one to arrive?

thanks everyone! i'm a newb...

[mikemart]

When I ordered my coupe, they told me I could put down any amount. When I heard this, I only put down a 100 bucks---why give them more money sooner than you have to? You can earn interest during the wait, or shop around for the best financing.

Also, at my dealership, there was no discussion of financing or trade-in until the day I actually took delivery.

I most people seem to way around 7-8 weeks, I think. For reasons unknown to me (perhaps location), I waited approx 9.5 weeks.

Welcome!

[mcheddadi]

LOL I waited more than 5 months for it . lucky bastard hahaha

[mikemart]

Ouch. Was that because you are a native of our Northern Sister or because you ordered a first run A/C?

Damn--I about went nuts with my wait!!

[Lurchdubious]

wow, yeah that wouldn't work for me; waiting 5 months. i'm mainly wondering because i'll be trading my '04 Titan and i know that the value will go down come January 1, so i'm wanting to get into an alty pretty fast to get the most out of my truck. ideally, i could go in, order the car, make a deposit, get a solid trade in value for my truck & have all the papers signed then drive my truck for 2 months (while it's snowing) till the car comes in. i really doubt i could do this as i'm betting they'll want to recalculate the value of my truck. in that time period i'd prolly only put on about 600 more miles, but it would be considered 4 years old instead of 3 and that would prolly hurt me.

[Seraph321]

I was in a similar position in september. I ordered a 3.5se first week of september for november delivery. They could offer me 8500 for my rsx as it was the day I ordered it, and I told them I would only buy the car when it arrived if I could get the same trade-in price in november. They agreed as long as I kep the mileage under 80k (I was at about 79k at the time, but was going on vacation so I wasn't driving it much).All I had was a written note from the dealer about the trade-in, and I only put $500 down, but that's fully refundable if I don't buy the car.

It all went as planned and there was no problem when i picked it up. They barely even looked at the RSX to be honest. I was surprised because that was the best trade-in offer I had out of 5 dealerships.

[Flypinoy457]

I ordered my Altima Coupe 3.5 6speed, in late September. And the expected delivery date is next week I had put 1,000 down payment though, but they said I can test drive the car once it gets delivered and if its not to my likings i could either order another one, or have my money refunded completely. I had already driven another altima coupe 3.5 6speed at another dealership, and was sold right there. Only reason why I didnt buy that coupe on the spot was color, and options.

One week away .. Thing what sucks though, is this week and next week is final exams and as that date gets closer and closer I am paying less attention to the books and more attention to the car.

[Lurchdubious]

seraph, that is exactly what i need!! the only difference, and it's potentially a big one, is that 2008 will have rolled around by the time the car arrives, and i don't think i'll get as much for the truck...

i guess i'll have to visit several dealers to have the best chance of getting what i want, but it's great to hear other's experiences, especially since i have zero experience in this area. lol.

[Lurchdubious]

I ordered my Altima Coupe 3.5 6speed, in late September. And the expected delivery date is next week I had put 1,000 down payment though, but they said I can test drive the car once it gets delivered and if its not to my likings i could either order another one, or have my money refunded completely. I had already driven another altima coupe 3.5 6speed at another dealership, and was sold right there. Only reason why I didnt buy that coupe on the spot was color, and options.

One week away .. Thing what sucks though, is this week and next week is final exams and as that date gets closer and closer I am paying less attention to the books and more attention to the car.

LOL. that's rough man. i don't think i could do it. i'm having a crazy time trying to figure out what to do about trading in my truck and how it's going to work out and if i'm going to have to drive all over the state to find a good dealership. my finals are next week too. hah.

[Seraph321]

when it comes to working with dealers - approach it like you would if you didn't have a trade in first. So you use one of the websites that puts your request for a quote to all the local dealers, then you wait for them to start contacting you. You tell the first place "I'm looking to order and I'm hoping to get $750 over invoice" or something along those lines. Then once you get a dealer to give you that, you play that offer off everyone who calls you after that and just say "I'm only interested if you can give me less than what I've already been offered."

ONLY start talking about the tradein when you have the offers you like. Then you can be like "Well I have a tradein and I'd like to have you evaluate it to make sure you can give me a good price." What sucks is that you'll obviously have to drive to the dealership to do this, but hopefully you've managed to get a couple places close to you down on the price first. Then you can start haggling tradein price. This will also help you with the delay because you can be like "well this dealership says they'll give me x for my tradein, but they won't gaurantee me that price when the coupe is delivered, so if you can do that, i'll order it here."

and so on.

[Lurchdubious]

^^^great advice man! thanks. i think that's the route i'm going to take. i'm kind of waiting to see if a buddy can transfer his VPP discount to me...