Good luck to your dad.....I hope he stays safe in Iraq.


The Yaris is an exceedingly well-built small car. I'm quite impressed with its overall solidness/build quality, inside and out, especially with the solid "thunk" door closings. But, IMO, the styling is geeky, and the interior was done with the primary gauges in the middle of the dash (a cheap cost-cutting measure that makes it easier to do both left and right-hand drive versions). The blankness behind the steering wheel and the mid-dash gauge location is annoying to many drivers....me included.

 

Saturn does not stick to the sticker price, maybe at one time, that ship has sailed. I remember trying to buy a Saturn Sky the markups were excessive, the worthless addon's like "interior stain protection package" which consits of a $5 can of 3M Scotchgard sprayed on being peddled for $150 and "glass vin etching" rampant on top of the markups and "cannot be taken off the price of the car, you must pay the market rate adjustment markup of $3000 then another $1000 for said addons or you cannot buy the car". This was my first dealing with Saturn (or any US car company) so I was shocked their dealers play by their own rules and GM does nothing to stop them. The excessive markups and the fact the entire dash lighting didn't work on the brand new Sky made me rethink why I would ever leave Toyota/Lexus/Honda with 20 years of perfect motoring.

SATURN NO LONGER PLAYS THE NO HAGGLE NO MARKUP GAME At one time I even had people around the country submitting a list of which Saturn dealers were marking up, I was shocked at how many so I can safely say if a company gets a hot car, all the rules go out the window, and now when the car is not popular (or in the case of the Sky unreliable) they have already shot themselves in the foot:

http://www.frappr.com/saturnskydealers/map

 

What I mentioned was the official company policy. Individial dealers may or may not adhere to it themselves........if they don't, they risk loss of their Saturn franchises if customers complain.

In the D.C. area where I live (the country's second-largest new-car market outside of Los Angeles) Saturn dealerships (officially known as retailers) generally play by the rules. The markups I have seen, where and when they occur (mostly on high-demand products), are for official, Saturn-approved accessories/equipment. That is legit........and within company policy.

 

I think there's a loophole in how Scion works.
I believe they have to stick with the sticker price so it's no haggling in the sense of whatever is on the sticker is whatever the price is. Dealer's are allowed to set their own prices. So dealer A can set the same vehicle equipped the same with different prices than dealer B so long as the price of what they sell it at is what's on the sticker. Same with accessories. Although it sounds like dealers will fudge on the accessories.
I'm looking into to buying something cheap and fairly well equipped because nothing on the market is in my price range that I want. So I'm going to probably buy a tC and buy something else a couple years down the road when something better comes along.

 

You are correct-- Scion does not set the pricing on vehicles or accessories (By law, we are not allowed to do so). Dealers set their prices (therefore, pricing from dealer to dealer may, and usually does, vary). Our "pure price" policy is that once the dealerships set and POST the price, there is no negotiation on that price. (Posted price not only refers to the price on the monroney label, but also posted prices on dealers' websites).

Dealers are allowed to lower prices on a Scion vehicle, however, if they are discounting $400 on one 2008 xB, they must discount $400 on all 2008 xBs on their lot, in order to be compliant with Pure Price.