How hard is it to find a specific color/trim config now?

My Dealer has had has and still has virtually zero Primes since the beginning of the Pandemic. But I'm in the midwest. Not exactly Prime Country.

 

hard enough just to find any car. i would stop in at as many dealers as possible and chat with them.

that will tell you if they even have a prime in stock, or if any are coming in, and when.

you may even find some that will let you place an order.

 

Car gurus might give you an idea of what's currently available.

 

How much above original MSRP are you willing to pay for a used one?

In my area (opposite coast from you), there are no new ones in any color or trim.

 

In short: Difficult at best. I've been working with three out of the half-dozen Toyota dealers in our metro area and tracking what Prius Primes pop up on their website. Basically we narrowed what we wanted down to a non-black Prius Prime XLE or Limited.

In talking with a few dealership, this is how it works:

Dealerships get allocations every two weeks on Thursday/Friday. One dealer said that the Wednesday before, they get "pre-allocation" info with possibly the option to do changes, like changing the color. Otherwise what I have heard elsewhere is that dealers really can't "order" Toyotas. Toyota dictates what dealers get. Dealers are able to swap vehicles with other dealers, but I haven't a clue how much or well that works given the near-cutthroat conditions these days.

Allocations are really thin. I think about every third allocation period, the dealer I was working most closely with never got a Prius Prime. If a dealership did get one, it was quantity one, not two or three.

Cars go fast. I heard of someone missing out on a Prius Prime literally by 20 seconds. The salesman I worked with at one dealer had the Prius Prime they got snatched by another salesperson before he could even try to get dibs on it. Basically if you want a high-demand vehicle, you need to be ready to sign immediately. I closed our deal in about five to ten minutes from being told they had a Prius Prime available. But I knew what I wanted to pay and what I wanted, so it was straightforward and relatively stress-free.

A couple dealers do what I call a chow call. You let them know you want a <model> and they notify all customers when they get one allocated. Then the first one to arrive at the dealership and sign gets the car. I can imagine that getting ugly.

Most of the Prius Primes are LE or XLE. I think I've see two Limiteds in the four months spent trying to get a car.

Lately I've also noticed that half or more the XLEs are black with the rest being blue, white, gray, or silver. Only one Supersonic Red popped up during my four month search.

Pricing: A few dealer charged MSRP plus accessories; no market adjustment. However some of those "accessories" are high margin dealer packs like fabric/interior protection coatings and the dreaded Kart alarm systems. Fortunately I was able to elude those.

Hope this helps. I had to constantly remind myself that even though we had to be patient, we could buy a LOT of $5+ premium fuel for our other cars for the market price adjustments and dealer packs that a couple dealers wouldn't budge on.

 

has anyone tried bribing a salesperson?

 

Something else I researched to get an idea of volumes of Primes being sold as reported by Toyota's quarterly reports: I went back through the last year and some of sales numbers, and they show a marked decline over time:

June 2021: 3087
Sept 2021: 875
Dec 2021: 1154
March 2022: 950
June 2022: 665

 

See:
Factory Order Anyone? | PriusChat

Code:

https://priuschat.com/threads/factory-order-anyone.231072/#post-3249854

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You will likely find that with all cars these days