A possible new chase ride

[Dennis Sherrod]

I looked at Edmunds, and it had it listed at $20,152. So, the dealer price is still about 2-3 thousand dollars less than Kelly and Edmunds.

Jason, I compared the prices around here for the same vehicle and the price is very similar, maybe just a tad lower there. So looks like a pretty good deal as long as the CarFax report is good.

 

[Jason Boggs]

I just went and looked at it, and I must say, it's in great condition. No dings or dents, and the interior is in almost perfect condition. I talked to the salesman and told him that I'm interested. I'm going to be wheelin and dealin next week when I have more time. He said he'll get me a carfax report for it and he had no problems with me taking it to a mechanic. Crossing my fingers that it will still be there.

 

[Daniel Barker]

toyotas, probably nissan too go for 300k why wouldn't you replace your timing belt, water pump, plugs or whatever and go forward. when you get stuck in hail insurance may end up replacing your car anyway, in the mean time you will able to hold your cash. unless you always wanted an xterra

 

[Jason Foster]

I would definitely reccomend a vehicle history on a used one.

Just remember that CarFax and the other one (I forgot the name attm), only show what is reported. My own test a while back came up with only 50% of vehicles coming up with collision reports.

Don't just look at Kelly Blue Book values, also look at the NADA and Edmunds True Market Value. Often time KBB is thousands of dollars different than the NADA or Edmunds values. Take the lowest of the 3 to the dealership and don't pay any more than that, period.

That is really good advice. Kelly is pretty much the standard now for the consumer end, but NADA use to be the only name in town for price guides so many dealers are very familiar with them. Internal price books...I think they refer to it as "the black book" refers to whole sale and other items, but I believe is a product from NADA, just not available to the public easily.

 

[AndyGabrielson]

I had a hard time choosing between an Xterra and a Nitro. Xterra's as Dennis said get great reports and that seems to be a fair price i kind of looked around on autotrader as well and it seemed like that wasn't a "so low its too good to be true" price, but more of a "priced to sell relatively quickly"... on a side note i found one about 15 miles from my house that has been in a front end collision it only has 20,000 miles and is 4,000 bucks, I may have to go evaluate the situation best of luck Jason.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Don't just look at Kelly Blue Book values, also look at the NADA and Edmunds True Market Value. Often time KBB is thousands of dollars different than the NADA or Edmunds values. Take the lowest of the 3 to the dealership and don't pay any more than that, period.

I looked at the 3, and here is the prices...

NADA- 19,500
Kelley- 19,800
Edmunds- 21,500

The dealer wants 17,900 for the Xterra so it's already close to 2,000 dollars lower than any of these.

By the way, I was told it was a rental which kind of worries me a bit. I know how folks treat rentals sometimes. It will still have the manufacturers warranty with it, so that's a plus.

 

[Brandon Sullivan]

Hey Jason! I really like the xterras!

I have never had one, but before I got my Jeep Liberty Renegade, the xterra was at the top of my list!

Sounds like a good deal..

 

[James Siler]

The price does sound pretty good, but what about gas mileage? My friends wife has one and he loves it but hates it's mileage. When gas got over $3 he would only drive it when he absolutley had too. Just another thought to throw out there. I hope all goes well for you though.

 

[Jason Boggs]

The price does sound pretty good, but what about gas mileage? My friends wife has one and he loves it but hates it's mileage. When gas got over $3 he would only drive it when he absolutley had too. Just another thought to throw out there. I hope all goes well for you though.

The mileage won't be much worse than what I have now. I drive a 4x4 Nissan Frontier that gets about 20 or 21 on the highway. Xterra's aren't much different than that. I had considered something like a Toyota RAV4 or something like that. After test driving the RAV4, I hated it. It's a good vehicle with pretty good mileage, but it just wasn't for me.

 

[Adam Ball]

Last Ocotober I bought an 08 TrailBlazer similiar to that Xterra. I got it in Amarillo for $16,900, a couple 1000 under KBB, had 19,000 miles on it, still had the factory warranty plus another year as it was a certified used car, every thing looks great on it and it was also a rental. At first I wasn't sure about it being a rental, but the fact that it's still under warranty for a few years got me by that. It's been a great truck so far. The best part was that they delivered to do my house after work 100 miles away. That was the selling point for me.

 

[Jay McCoy]

Sounds like a great buy Jason and if you can get them down to the low 17's thats even better. Also dont forget you should get 3-4k minimum for your truck which would drop it even more (not sure of bluebook on your truck but they always give more than that). Except for a few dents and 140k miles your truck is in great shape. I have that 2000 Bravada and they offered almost 5k on it as tradein when I was looking at a new explorer last month. After trade in I wouldnt pay more than 13-14k plus with your credit you should have no problem getting very low interest from your bank. Shop the loan around also just to see what you can get. Remember winter is ending and with the economy and the public turning towards smaller cars SUV"s are hard to sell right now so now is a great time to haggle prices and buy one cheap.

Steve and I will be happy to help you get all your stuff wired in. scanner, ham (get your damn license ya lazy bum), laptop and camera mounts etc.. Ofcourse it wont be this saturday since we have the severe wx workshop at the civic center

 

[Scott Roberts]

I looked at the 3, and here is the prices...
By the way, I was told it was a rental which kind of worries me a bit. I know how folks treat rentals sometimes. It will still have the manufacturers warranty with it, so that's a plus.

Both our vehicles were off-rental, and we've not had a single rental-use related issue with them. Both are in the 120k to 140k mileage ragnd, running about 30k a year on each of them.

When we bouth, I went looking for rental vehicles, to be honest. Yeah, they might have gotten driven roughly, but you know the scheduled maintenance was done!

 

[J West]

I bought a Subaru dealer-owned loaner/rental last month with 7k miles and the remaining warranties for a song. The old man who owned the dealer wanted out, sold the store and they needed the cars gone...so they priced them well below wholesale and blew them out.

They pulled the service records on it to show me: it had 3 oil changes in 7k miles and 10 months in service, had the rear bumper cover replaced from a minor barely-reportable crash and was only rented a handful of times to people who had their cars in the body shop. It is clean inside and out, plus I couldn't say no to the price. It's the best deal on a car I've gotten to date.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Thanks for the great advice everyone. Jay, I'm going to ask 5,000 for my truck and see if they bite. If not, I definitely won't take less than 4,000. The Xterra is listed at 17,900, but I'm going to try to get them down to 16,000 or 16,500.

Wednesday is my first day off. I'm going to the car lot to see if it's still there. If it is, the first order of business will be to get a carfax report. If it's clean, I'm then going to take the vehicle for the day and drive it to my parent's to get a feel of the road. It will be about 120 mile round trip. I'll drop it off at a mechanic the next morning and let them look at it from bumper to bumper. If all goes well, I'll start the buying process with some calls for the best interest rate on a loan.

I've done a little math the past couple of days. I think I'll realistically get about 4,000 for my truck and talk them down to about 16,500 for the Xterra. I'll also put 1,000 cash down. If I can finance it for about 11, 500 or 12,000, I'll get a 2 year note and pay about $475-500 a month for 24 months.

That will be awesome to pay it off in 2 years. I hope it goes as planned.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Well, I got the vehicle for the day, and I'm impressed. The got the carfax report first, and it's clean. It rides very well and it seems to have no mechanical problems whatsoever. I'll verify that tomorrow when I take it to a mechanic. Also, the sticker on the side window says...ORIGINAL WARRANTY 5 years or 60,000 miles. Is this the actual nissan warranty on all vehicles now or is this a possible extended warranty?

Anyway, if the mechanic clears the vehicle tomorrow, I'll hopefully make a deal and get my tail in gear to get ready for a possible chase Sunday and Monday.