Looking at buying a 2012 Prius IV, couple questions

I just bought a Prius Four yesterday, trading in my trusty 2005 Prius.

On the Prius Four, the moon roof package will also get you the premium navigation. You can't get one without the other. If you want only the moon roof, and not the nav upgrade, I believe that the Prius Three has that option. You might take a look at the Three and see if it would meet your needs.

On pricing, the $29K price would be without the moon roof, and the $33K price would be with that option. In my hunting around, I found that not all dealers show the option packages in their inventory lists, but I could use the prices to find the car I wanted. In the end, I went to the dealer who gave me the best deal, and they fetched the car I wanted from a different location.

 

I test drove Fours both without the solar roof package (with the "display audio nav" I think it's called) and with the solar roof package (with the "HDD premium navigation"). I know it's a lot of money for the solar roof package, but I didn't like the non-premium navigation much at all, besides the slightly smaller screen I found it hard to read the street names. I ended up buying the Four with the solar roof package... the HDD premium navigation isn't perfect (no nav is), but I'm happy with it.

 

I got III with Solar roof/nav package and wish I had gotten the IV to get the following:

1. The manual seats are uncomfortable and the 8 way power adjust seats are needed.

2. Auto/on/off on the headlights.

3. 7" HDD Nav gets XM Data Services for XMNav traffic so you are not sucking your cell phone bandwidth for traffic overlay and rerouting which you must do with the 6" std nav. XMNavTraffic on my Ford Escape Hybrid seemed better than the Entunes Traffic.

4. Heads up display for tech toy value.

That said, I'm OK saving $5K and getting 90% of the tech and 100% of the 50mpg mileage. I'll have Toyota add the Auto/On/Off headlight switch. I'll get some cushions for the seat and put the $4K savings into the boat.

You are making the right choice the IV and those upgrades.

 

Congrats! But I'm confused... you mean you bought the Prius hatchback Four? If that's the case, you can't get the premium HDD nav without the moonroof (as someone mentioned already above).

 

Oops, you're right - sorry!

 

I just bought a used Prius 4 with 6K miles yesterday and it feels like a major step up from the 2008 pkg 6 I still have. The seats are much better and the car just feels like a heavy car in comparison. I am very pleased so far.

 

I'm not sure I would buy ANYTHING from a dealer who added at "$4999 adjusted market value charge" to any car on his lot. It just seems unethical to me.

Just sayin'.

 

+1 ;-)

I was wondering, are other dealers adding big market value adjustments these days too? I bought my car about 1 1/2 months ago, I think right before street prices went up. I also just read an article about record sales of the Prius for March and Q1 2012, so, I guess they probably are selling for quite a bit more now than they were a couple of months ago.

 

Here in the south Seattle area the 2012 four solars are sticker priced at aprx $33,250 and they are quoting me $31,947 to buy one that's sitting on the lot

 

That "added market value" scam happens a lot when gas prices start to move up, unfortunately. We only found one of the local dealers that didn't mark up their Prii back in 2005 when we bought ours. Everyone else was adding loads of "market adjustment $$" to theirs.

We were going to buy a new Prius this summer, but decided to move the purchase up as soon as we started hearing predictions of fuel price increases. Plus, about that same time, Toyota started zero percent financing. That convinced us to not wait.

Sad to say that this story isn't new. I bought a '79 Golf (Rabbit back then) diesel in Germany at the end of a stint in the Air Force, and had it shipped from the Wolfsburg factory to Jacksonville Florida during the 1979 oil shortage. I picked it up at port and took it to a dealership in Tampa to have the dealer delivery check done on it and was offered $10,000 on the spot by the dealership! I had only paid about $6,000 for it, with all options except sunroof and the autobox. It had to be a manual with that diesel engine. Made it fun to drive. We found dealerships selling these little cars for unbelievable prices all over the place.

That was the first car I owned that got 55 MPG! They were in very high demand. I also brought all the pieces, parts, wheels and badges to make it into a GTI clone. Took a great trip across the entire U.S. and parts of Canada in that thing, and were stopped everywhere by people asking how we got the GTI into the country. I had to explain that it was really just a German diesel Rabbit.

Hopefully the price of gasoline will tumble again (soon would be good) and sane pricing will return. I think it's worth the little time it takes to call around an area to find dealers that won't up the prices beyond sticker. Don't pay the mark-up.

 

I've always heard that the car manufacturers really frown on dealers adding to the sticker price for any reason. Is that not the case anymore?

I have a 2011 and believe me the navigation system is far better than the 2012 both from the ability to have variations in what is displayed (dual mode, highway mode, turn list mode, and a couple of others I can't remember. The 7" screen may not have the resolution of the 6", but you can read all the streets without any problem. The sun doesn't wash out the screen on the 7" as well. And more importantly for me, the voice commands actually understand what you are saying which I cannot say for the 2012.

 

I got $2381 off MSRP on my BP Four Solar Plus Performance. Of course I am still waiting for the ship to arrive, but the price is finalized. No way would I even accept anything close to MSRP. The dealer I am dealing with said gas prices have no effect on any Toyota vehicle cost. All vehicles from their stores are $500 over invoice plus tax, title, license & TDA.

Mike

 

hmm, our dealers were definitely dealing on 2011 models, but not on 2012's. I got my gen3 2012 prius IV with all weather mats for 29,410 OUT THE Door. It was 27,200 invoice. I think I could have gotten at least 1k better if i had wanted a 2011. As long as you are happy, thats all that matters, but I believe you overpaid a lttle for the instant gratification of getting something on the lot. My dealer kept trying to throw prices at me of cars that were all ready build, but that all had slightly more in options than what i wanted. I just stood my ground, said this is my price and I don't care how long it takes to get it from somewhere. They had originally told me at least 30 days to find one and maybe the price would be the same. How not surprised was I when they found one in 2 days Car salesmen are car salesmen.

 

I had one dealer tell me $2000 off MSRP and the car would take 6 months to arrive ound:

They did NOT get my business.

Mike :tea: