I'm still just sort of in shock that that's a $200,000 black Mercedes Maybach paint job. All 3 of my old cars have better paint jobs than that.

 

Two of them are Lexuses and the Mercedes is from another era for MB. If you look at the paint on a new LS or LC or LX its excellent.

 

DealerTrack (the source he credited on his post) is backed by *** Automotive. Think of how many millions of data points that is pulling from to aggregate the data that he posted. I'll trust him on it. Prime rate as of today is 7.75%.

 

Depend on which colors. I was backing out of a packing space, the **** on the other side started to back out and scraped my back (Pearl White). The sucker said he backed out first and I scraped him. My wife didn't think it'd worth the argument so asked me to just go. I looked at the mark and was like "..." When I got home, I gave her a good wash. Surprisingly, almost all were from the other car. I was able to wash it off only had to look close to see one area with damage. When I sold the car, they didn't even catch it. But their blacks are terrible. So easy to scratch. I think one once said, "if you stare hard at the OB black, you'll scratch it." Lol. This is my first experience with BMW but I feel it's stronger. I sent it through the grinders a hand full of times already but that didn't seem to put any damage on the paint.

 

Just go on bank websites and see their rates...

BOA:




Bankrate:

 

B of A showing "as low as" doesn't mean that's the actual rate people will get. Same with the Bankrate screenshot - that's aggregating published lowest offers. With prime at 7.75%, you know the majority of customers are not actually getting Prime minus 1.5%, but that's what the Bankrate screenshot would lead you to believe.

The guy on Twitter posted retrospective data (for the month of January) of the average rate people actually utilized to finance when buying a car. It's completely different data, because it's showing what is actually being utilized, not what's being advertised in the form of a "rates as low as"...

 

We have gotten used to borrowing money at low rates. lol

I got 5.9% from Ford Motor Credit on a new truck years ago and I thought that was awesome.
I remember hard times many years ago when car loans were double digits for people with good credit.

 

Oh I have, and agree. Just still sort of shocked that's a $200,000 vehicle with paint like that.

 

Lenders lend below prime all the time for a fixed asset, especially with captive finance arms from manufacturers. Almost all manufacturers have rates considerably below prime, and those rates yes are achievable. I've done business with BOA for a long time, and you can walk into the Bank and if you have good credit you will get that rate. If those averages are accurate there are a lot of people getting totally hosed on rates that are driving those averages up.

Here is another lender who's published rates are very achievable for a borrower (PenFed), I know from having seen them used time and time again:




The point is, when you or I go and finance a car, we aren't paying anything close to those kinds of rates

 

Hard paint for the win lol!

I'm actually finally getting around to cleaning my W12, doing clay now and I'm actually surprised. The paint is noticeably better than my black A8 and it's not just the color difference. There is less than half the orange peel and it's very uniform....it's also cleaning up very well/easy

 

Right, but remember, there are LOTS of auto buyers who aren't members of a Lexus message board. For example, I've never in my life taken an auto loan longer than 5 years, and most have been 3 or less. But the average term among all loans is 70 months--for people in the middle range (601-660 credit score), the average is 75 months. So for every me, there's somebody taking out a 10-year mortgage on a Dodge Journey at 15.95%.

To put things into perspective about how different the Luxury car market is from the overall market, take the Audi A3. At $35k to start, it is the second cheapest vehicle sold by any of the big 4 (and $13k below the median for all cars), with the A-class being just $1k cheaper. Median household income of A3 buyers is $120k, nearly double the national average. If you go to the "hot" version, the RS3, that figure rises to $200k, three times the national average. These folks as a group likely have better than average credit. And remember, this is the bottom of the luxury market. It goes WAY up from here. But head the other direction, and in aggregate you're going to start to see credit scores dropping, with rates rising commensurately.

 

I see it has a clearbra, is it just the front clip or is it the whole car?

But the question is what value then is the "average number"? Clearly for people who are smart and are not going to be taken advantage of we are not paying those rates. The implication was the rates I posted from BOA etc were teaser rates that you wouldn't actually be able to get and thats just not true. The average credit score is like 715, most people have access to rates far better than what was given as an average, that was my point.

In my business, rates are also HIGHLY variable from lender to lender right now, far moreso than is normal with as much as a 1% swing in rate depending on the product, I would guess that is also true when it comes to auto financing. The lender is the difference between a rate in the low 5s and a rate in the low 6s.

 

The nose cone plus all leading edges and wheel wells, it came what way funny enough and I was going to add it anyway if it didn't have one. It appears to have been on the car from original owner, paint under it is perfect as is most of the car actually. I suspect whoever had this before me also liked driving quickly at times since the rear of wheel well clear bra is normally applied to prevent high speed sandblasting of the area.

I'll only have to correct about 7 areas on this one paint wise, no real damage just some moderate scratches and two door edge chips. The fact it's aluminum means it resists dents well and rust is just not a concern but man it's bad if you need PDR.

 

Good PDR techs can handle aluminum no problem, you just have to find good ones...

 

There's also the thing about the dealers finance department.

That's where they really go to work on ya and they will lie, lie, lie.
This is where they pitch you and say your credit may not be as good as you think or lead you to believe the offered rate is the best they can do or banks are "tightening up", etc.

I knew someone(not a friend) that added 1-2% on the loan aka got the loan approved and added extra percentage points to pad the dealer's profit.
From what I understand, these are common dealer tricks.