Thread: Bought a new 2008 Dodge Charger

EDIT: Let me rephrase...

At that base price, why didn't you consider the SXT? Granted you probably couldn't lower it that much. But wouldn't it be worth the extra bucks? I don't know what extras that SE was packing though.

And what color, btw? Tell me it's black? Tell me you didn't get the striped yellow, hehe.

I'm not a big fan of American brands, I have to confess. Biased most probably. But Dodge is an exception.

That thing got a hemi?

Far better dickering than I can do, Bubba.

He stated the MSRP in the original post, he's just wondering if he haggled enough...

Anyway... 7-8% under the invoice is pretty good in my opinion. Nothing to complain about and to say whether or not you could haggle farther at that point would depend on the salesman. Some might go lower, but many would not.

Good for you for sticking to your guns.

Picture please...

Nice, bit big

You should have got a Pontiac G8 -- nothing like an Australian car!

No it doesn't have a Hemi. However it is basically an SXT with the 3.5 HO V6 and other options. Dodge obviously cannot sell the SXT so they created the SE plus which is a base SE with just about the same exact options as an SXT. To entice buyers they deducted 1795 off the SE plus which brings the car down from the SXT 25k range to the 23k range. So it is essentially a highly modified SE. But the MSRP for the SE base is 21995 according to Edmunds and the invoice is 19969. In the end my total loan value was about 500 to 1k over the actual MSRP for a base SE.
So we have a modified SE for less than the base price of a base SE. I think that is a good deal.

Part of my haggling power comes from having been in the manufacturing industry as an auditor. Every time the salesman would throw some pitch I'd be like yeah....that takes about 35 more minutes on the assembly line which amounts to nothing and yet they want to charge 3k for that extra 35 minutes when labor and materials don't even come close to the 3k they want out of it. It's insane what they charge for extra options when in the factory it usually comes down to installing an extra module or wiring harness.

For instance most cars that do not have traction control are actually traction control ready. The ECM and software are usually ready for it and the speed sensors are on the wheels since ABS uses them. So installing traction control on a car really comes down to adding the control module and hooking up the wire harness that is just sitting around in your car unused. But most if not all of the components are already there. This is true for about90% of the options that come on a car. The reason is it takes less time on the assembly line and it is less confusing for the assemblers if all they have to do is add a module here and there. It really is amazing though how much the factory sticker price changes for said add-ons when in the factory scheme of things they really don't amount to squat. Factories make big bucks on extra options b/c they take almost no extra time on the line and yet they can pitch it that the option is sooooo much better on a car that has it than on one that does not. In reality it probably wouldn't cost near as much as they charge to order the missing modules and install it yourself.
The module sure won't cost 3k and you won't have to put 3k of labor into it to get it working. It's a well known sales pitch in manufacturing and for the most part, it works very well.

That's why I don't get all googly eyed about this option or that option. They also showed me the motor and as a former auditor I could see clear evidence of corners being cut. Composite (more like plastic but composite sounds more high tech - it's really plastic) intake plenum, cheapened interior, rubber air intake tubes (steel mandrels and a lot better), cheap fasteners on interior pieces and trim, cheap and ineffective air intake filter housing - also located in the hottest part of the engine which completely robs horsepower. Lots of corners being cut and yet they raise the price not lower it. Material costs are high but they don't justify cheapening the interior and engine yet raising the overall price. So the components are actually cheaper than before and they justify the price increase by resorting to their favorite excuse of rising materials, labor, and benefits costs.

The actual reason for American cars manuf. being in the red now is a complete lack of good high tech engineering on parts. No one wants to buy a car that will be in the shop 20k to 30k later but that's exactly what you get on most American cars. It's usually not the assembler's fault nor the assembly process but the part itself. No amount of quality checks and factory internal quality audits can ever beat an inferior part. If you put inferior parts on a car or machine they will fail and make the machine appear inferior. Outsourced parts usually have many problems and b/c they are out-sourced the factories lose control on the quality. Only so much can be inspected at the factory gate and the rest is found out in the field. American car manuf. have the technology and ability to produce very good cars but the mindset of the management must change. In the past they would rather cut a corner here and produce an inferior product if they could get a large volume of them out the door. This mindset kills a company. Quality must be first while also being tempered with volume. You can't produce 5 cars a day b/c of elongated quality checks and yet you also cannot produce 500 lemons a day. It's always a balancing act between volume and quality. Toyota and some other foreign manuf. seem to have found a way to produce volume with quality.
If the push is always volume, quality suffers. Most factories now are moving to a pull type system where they 'pull' defects off the line and fix em instead of pushing them out the door which inevitably ends up in the consumers hands.

Originally Posted by zacs7

Nice, bit big

You should have got a Pontiac G8 -- nothing like an Australian car!

Ouch! That must hurt.

Speaking of Australian cars, Used to drive an Holden Astra back in Adelaide. The thing drove like a tin can on a string. Granted, it had been designed by Opel. Guess Holden couldn't have find a worst European maker.

Which brings the question... has Holden finally stopped looking outside for bodywork?

> Which brings the question... has Holden finally stopped looking outside for bodywork?
Yes, sort of. They seem to take the American shapes... Ie over-sized everything. But the front-wheel drive 'poor performance' cars are still mostly Eurpean influenced, Opel is long gone . The only thing that comes from here, ground up is the Utes.

By the time I can legally drive a V8, I'll be able to have the Maloo ute (pic: http://images.motortrend.com/feature...arter_view.jpg)

You can see it sort of looks American, "light sport pick-up truck".

What other cars did you look at Bubba? Out of curiosity... Or did you just want the Dodge? More importantly, what did you upgrade from?

I actually just bought a car too, Bubba. Being a student, however, I didn't buy anything brand new. I bought a used 1999 Honda Civic. It's been kept in really good condition by its previous owner, and it only had 108k miles on it, which is great or 99 Civic. It can get at least another 100k on the engine (most likely 200k more knowing Honda cars). I love Hondas.

So you chose the Dodge mainly out of loyalty then? I much prefer Honda or Toyota.