While it hasn't arrived at the dealership , my bank is dropping my financing rate by 0.45 % based on me buying a fuel efficient car. I couldn't believe it! They are seriously running a promotion right now that starts at a base APR and adjust it down based on how fuel efficient the purchased car is. It's about time that private industry promote/reward people for doing the right things!
That's pretty cool that they're doing that. Is that a local bank or what? I just bought mine in Nov from Beck (in Greenwood), but financed with Toyota.
Other benefits besides financing: State farm gave me both a safety discount for all the airbags the prius has as well as an additional discount for buying an environmentally-friendly vehicle. some states allow you use of a carpool (aka HOV) lane with just the driver and no other persons in the car. This is actually just a government ploy to extract $$ from you. In VA you get a special plate, but in CA you have to destroy your car with a bunch of ugly yellow stickers. slowly more and more malls and grocery stores are putting hybrid-only parking spots right up front with the handicapped ones. toyota is also offering discounts on the 2008 prius, b/t $1000 and $2000 depending on how fully loaded your prius is, this is to encourage the sale of 2008's. w/o the discount nobody would buy a prius this year because an all new 2009 prius is coming with better-looking wheels, redesigned better-looking body, and around 80 city mpg with a bigger engine and battery. For this reason I had to refrain from buying a new one the other day when I was getting an oil change for my 05 prius. I have a feeling dealerships will be giving even larger discounts later on this year in order to sell prius'. The dealerships will counter-balance this by charging higher-than-sticker prices when the redesigned 2009 comes out, so I probably won't buy a new one until 2010.
Are those discounts from Toyota corp?? If so, might I still get those since my car has not been delivered yet? I just checked my region...no discounts/rebates.... While I would have liked to wait till the 09s came out, circumstances required me to make a move now! I will let others be the test subjects for a few years...
hey animalcontrol toyota.com says there are incentives up to $2,000, but a prius with no options probably only has a $1,000 incentive, so it depends on how loaded the prius is. i got an oil chance at my dealership last week and they confirmed that there were incentives, they even had a barcelona red touring model which is my favorite model/color combo, so i had to really strain myself to refrain from buying it. it may vary from region to region, my dealership had 4 prius just sitting there, if your dealership has none than maybe your region is still selling prius' well and therefor they don't need incentives, but the toyota.com website gave me the impression that it was a nationwide factory discount. So if there is a factory discount than your dealership is ripping you off by keeping it for themselves.
Thanks for the heads up. My car hit the dealership today!! I checked toyota.com and it showed no discounts of any kind for Prius in the Chicago region. If I'm looking in the wrong place, let me know. I will ask either way tomorrow when I take posession of my new car!
I'm not sure what Indiana offers but the $1,000 rebate from Illinois treasurer's office for financing our Prius sure was nice. See Alexi Giannoulias - Illinois State Treasurer Check with your treasurer's office. We financed our 2008 about a 6 weeks ago and are looking forward to receiving the $1000 Visa card from Illinois in the next month or so. We already have it spent on a hitch, bike rack and a few other Prius stuff. Good luck!
