Ten easiest cars to bargain for

Forbes.com - Jacqueline Mitchell

The 2009 model year officially begins Oct. 1 and, for the most part, automakers couldn't be happier. The date signals the end of one of the worst-ever years for auto sales.

Before dealers can move on to 2009 models, however, they need to clear their showrooms of 2008 vehicles--and there are plenty of them. This means it's a buyer's market. On several slow-selling 2008 models, it's easy to bargain down the price.

Granted, end-of-summer deals aren't new, and the mad rush to negotiate a bargain--before a new model year officially begins--heats up just about every September. But never before have the September bargains been so deep and so widespread, says Jack R. Nerad, executive editorial director and executive market analyst with Kelley Blue Book. "You have to look at 2001 or so, right after 9/11, to find that kind of trauma that is taking place in the market today."

With the summer spike in gas prices a not-too-distant memory and oil prices experiencing a single-day $25 jump earlier this week, it shouldn't come as any surprise that prices of big gas guzzlers are among the most negotiable. Prices of Ford's F-150 pickup have been tumbling all year.

Before the new 2009 F-150--which gets 1.61Km per litre in highway driving compared to 1.60Km per litre for the 2008 model--arrives in dealer showrooms, Ford wants to offload its 2008 F-150s as quickly as possible. During the first two weeks of September, dealers have sold F-150 pickups as much as $3,535 below the posted sticker price of $37,100, according to Kelley Blue Book, a provider of car-buying and trading information.

And that's not even the best deal around. While five of the 10 cars on our list of easiest cars to bargain for are big gas-guzzlers, the best bargain is on the Acura RL luxury sedan, which carries a sticker price of $54,450. The redesigned 2009 model was introduced in the spring and has been sharing showroom space with 2008 models that just won't go away. That's why a hard-bargaining buyer was able to drive off after paying $48,469, about $6,000 below the sticker price.

Behind the Numbers

To find the easiest cars to bargain for, we used data from Kelley Blue Book, which tracks actual sales transactions throughout the industry. Kelley supplied data on all vehicles that sold below their posted sticker price during the first two weeks of this month. Although some vehicles had several different models with higher and lower sticker prices (due to equipment and features particular to those models), we used only the model with the biggest price cut.

Joining the F-150 in the range of gas-guzzlers that are easy to bargain for are the luxurious, V-8 powered Audi Q7, which gets an EPA combined 1.61Km per litre, and the Cadillac Escalade, which only gets 1.60km per litre. The Audi recently sold for $4,750 below sticker, for $54,625, which is even less than the invoice price ($55,272) that the dealer paid the automaker. And the Escalade is now selling as much as $4,284 below the sticker price of $47,590.

"This is a reflection of the market changing quicker than the factory," says Jeff Bartlett, deputy editor online at Consumer Reports. In other words, consumers began demanding smaller, more fuel-efficient cars before the automakers could supply them.

Luxury For Less

Luxury cars are a common sight on the list, alongside the Acura RL. A 2008 Mercedes-Benz E Class, in the fifth spot on the list, sold for $59,491, or $4,284 below the sticker price. And a 2008 Acura TL sedan sold for $35,658, or $3,527 below the sticker price. The venerable Lincoln Town Car also made the list, but auto experts believe discounts on this car are a result of fleet sales to chauffeur companies that transport executives to meetings. The Town Car sold for $47,590, about $4,230 below the sticker price.

A factor that could be keeping these types of cars on dealer lots is likely connected to the credit crunch in the housing industry, says Nerad. These cars are now much more difficult to purchase. "People were drawing on equity in their homes to buy a car they probably couldn't afford," he says. "Now a lot of that equity is gone and it is harder to qualify for credit."

When bargaining for these or any other cars, it's important to keep in mind that the dealer can sell below the invoice price and still make money, says Bartlett, as there are other incentives that automakers give dealers to push them to move slow-selling cars. But it's not like they need a whole lot of motivation. Dealers finance the cars they get from the manufacturer and cars that sit on the lot for more than 30 days start to cost the dealers money as finance fees and interest kicks in, says Bartlett. "It gets progressively expensive for dealers to keep cars that have been sitting there for a while," he adds.

To pay the lowest price for a new car, consumers should arm themselves with a little information. The best bargain price is one that is at or below invoice, which is what the dealer paid the manufacturer. Most of the vehicles on our list sold at invoice price but a couple, like the Chrysler Crossfire, sold for $3,278 below invoice price ($40,055 sticker price).

The ill-fated Crossfire roadster/coupe, introduced in 2004, never really captured the attention of sports-car buyers, so Chrysler stopped building Crossfires at the end of last year. Sales peaked in 2004 at 28,000 and fell to just 8,216 units in 2007. Now dealers are selling off what's taking up space on their lots.

"The market is driving the price of [these] less-desirable cars," says Bartlett.

The one downside is that the bargain-basement prices only last as long as the cars do. The longer consumers wait, the less likely they are to get the best possible deal on a 2008 model.

I honestly thought the Crossfire was discontinued.

Mind you, this is probably the minimum discount you can get. I would say you could nearly double the discount in some of these vehicles cases.