Last month we covered How to Select the Right M6 and the importance behind picking the right car. While picking the right car holds a lot of importance, its just as important to get the right deal on that car. This month we want to take you through how to negotiate the right deal as we did on our BMW M6. If you haven’t already done so, make sure to get your copy of How to Drive a Luxury Car for Free so that you can clearly understand the idea behind Project M6 and the logistics behind the car market.
For our particular car, we used Autotrader, eBay, and Cars.com to try to locate the right car. We used eBay to gauge prices and realized that all 2007 M6 with average miles and warranties were selling for $52,000 and up. We then followed through Manheim to realize that auction prices also known as black book were between $42,000 and $48,000 depending on the mileage, condition and without warranty. We then used Autotrader to actually locate the right car, the right mileage and the right location.
The way to ensure you find the right deal is taking in several variables:
- Location of the car (is the car in a state that would buy that type of car)
- How long the car has been on the lot
- The warranty offered as a certified car or existing warranty left
- The original asking price VS the current asking price
- The mileage and price in comparison to other deals within 300 miles.
Our search ended us at Circle BMW in NJ, which was roughly about 220 miles from our headquarters in Washington DC. The deal was a car listed at $52,500 on Autotrader and had been sitting on the lot over 90 days and so there was a much better chance to get the right deal. We ran a Carfax and Autocheck report to find our car was accident free and then departed to NJ to start our negotiations. This 2007 BMW M6 happened to be sitting pretty when we arrived and a thorough inspection was an important step of our buying process. We realized that our car had a few issues when inspected like a small scratch on the door and a few rock ships which we had the dealer repair as a condition. We also noted that this car was under factory warranty until Dec 2011 or 50,000 and the odometer sat at 42,000 when we were looking at it. Furthermore the car was offered as a CPO with extended warranty to 2013. All these things were great and all indications were set that this was the right car but do not let that fool you into your negotiations.
DO NOT BE PASSIONATE ABOUT THE CAR, BE PASSIONATE ABOUT GETTING THE RIGHT DEAL.
All was gravy but the fact remained that this car had been sitting there for 90 days and that’s all that mattered for us to make a deal that worked for us. Factoring in the fact that we understood that the car sat there and we were willing to accept a rock chip and a scratch that would be taken off led to us asking for a net price of $45,900 all said and done.
Here is how we concluded that this was a good deal: we factored in the cost of other deals, the warranty offered and the fact that black book listings were right around the dollar we were paying for the car making our depreciation much less than the normal loss on a such a car after a year or so.
There you have it on how we got our BMW M6 for $45,900 and 42,000 miles on the clock. Stay tuned next month, as we show you how to tune an M6 on a budget with nothing less than the best parts.
