I need some opinions on a truck here...

Today, after I was done being caught up at Pontiac since my friend's G6 was rattling (big surprise GM) after he had like half of the car replaced through warranty, we went over to Toyota's auxiliary lot where they normally house upwards of 20 Tacomas but for some reason they only have a green and speedway blue TRD sport DC LB which is not what I am looking for. So we went to the dealer to see what they have...no Speedway Blues...they do have a bunch of off-road 4x4's and sport 4x4's and all other models/combinations in 4x4 format.
They have this one Magnetic Gray TRD sport DC SB without the bluetooth package and in 4x2 format (which is exactly what I want just in SWB) for literally 28K flat on the sticker. Now the moment I touched it, I had 4 sales guys staring at me in anticipation and one of them went to get the finance/lease manager to talk to me about it which I really didn't want. But this did tell me that the truck had been there for a while, that and it was at the front of the dealer when the rest of them are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back.
Funny thing, everytime I said something it's like the guy didn't hear me and just said "you wanna drive the truck today?"
It had some sort of "Toyota Diamond Deal" mirror tag on the passenger's side floor...help me out on what that means???

I can tell right now that with this truck that is perfect in essence to being what I want, just in the wrong color, and that I could probably low-ball the hell out of them for a killer price.
My only problems are that:
a) I still have the Mazda that I have to sell for a higherish price so I can have money to buy this truck with
b) need the final word on how much more this will be than the Mazda to insure etc...
c)...I just forgot what c was...

What do you guys think about this truck?
What the hell is the "Toyota Diamond Pricing"?
How bad is my situation that I have to sell my car before I can walk in and talk about price with them?
How low-ball do you think I can get them...I'm hoping to sell my car for about 22K at most and put all that to the truck so I only have to pay TTL (which isn't cheap) and hopefully pull the truck down to about 22-22.5K OTD.
As always, any other advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys!!!
Jeff

 

The Allstate insurance on my truck wasn't much more than my 5 year old Saturn was (maybe $30/month) but I've also been with them for over 25 years. Go someplace that has an online quote, put in your current car to compare how much it would cost if you were with that company and then get another quote for a Tacoma to see how much the spread is between theirs and yours (e.g. www.progressive.com). That might give you an idea of how much the insurance will change. A good place to check for insurance is www.Costco.com. The company they partner with can save you some money.

For your car's value, check www.KBB.com to see how much your car is worth according to them. That's going to probably be an absolute ceiling as to how much the dealer will give you. Chances are a dealer will give you much less than the KBB trade-in price (the dealer I took mine to were $1500 below KBB), but they're more desperate now so who knows what they'll do. Check www.Autotrader.com to see how much people are listing your car for. That should give you an idea of what you can expect to sell yours for.

 

see what they will give you for your car in trade...remember you only have to pay taxes on what you actually pay them.... you can save money sometimes if the numbers work out right....when i bought my tacoma i only paid taxes on $5000 because my trade in was worth so much

 

Here is what we did, well I should say my wife since I am to quick to sign. She does all the homework and has covered all the bases before we hit the dealer.
Then she starts, we say NOTHING about a trade, matter of fact when the salesman brings it up she chages the subject. We take the trade out of the picture. Then we talk price and she gets the number she wants.
When we are about to sign..........she looks at me and then says we have a trade. Now if you do not like the person on the other side (sales person) say you are going to walk out unless to can talk to someone else. It's your money, they don't like that.
I took the class in selling Toyota's back in the early 90's, you would be surprised after all the time you put with them, talking about a price, getting as far as about to put name to paper. Get up, and say your leaving, people jump out of the wood work after that.

Now we don't have to do that because the CO. my wife works for takes care of it all. We can get a truck from anywhere shipped on a trailer and not have to pay anything extra.

 

I say go for it, get the features/config you want, the color is a secondary thing. After all I got rid of my 2008 Mazda-3 GT for the Tacoma & have never looked back.

 

rednecktaco, configure it under area code 94582 and see what it says. $28K seemed kinda odd to me but it was the sticker so I'm only gonna go down from there.

punkyuppie, I didn't know you only pay tax on what you pay them...that may make me reconsider selling my car and bringing in a check.

robrjohnson, I checked there and it's like 18K for trade in whereas I can get around 22K from private sale.

longbow, that's exactly what I was going to do but I already made a mistake of saying what I drive...but I didn't say I was going to trade it in yet...your approach sounds like it will be most successful. I'm am going to low-ball the hell out of them. What they say, I say a couple hundred lower.

coppert, I plan on it since I'm sure that truck isn't going to sell very soon. They had one woman on the lot with a salesguy (the only other person on the lot besides me) and she was looking at FJ's or Sequoias or something. I've just got one final word before I can try to strike some gold.

 

Tacoholic, i'm an insurance broker and would be more than happy to get you some quotes. PM me if you want. I wont fee you

 

Sweet!

I just built that truck and it came out to 27,500 on toyota's site....extra 500 off the sticker for no pain would be nice.

 

Remember the sale price difference vs trade-in difference when deciding whether it's worth it or not to trade it in.

For example, say the truck you buy is $28000 and your tax rate is 7%. That would mean a sales tax of $1960. So say you trade in at $18000. That means you're taxed on $10K which would come out to $700. So you would have saved $1260 in taxes by trading in.

However, the difference in your trade vs what you can sell for is $4000. So if you private sell your car for anything over the tax savings + trade-in value ($19260), you'll come out ahead by selling it yourself.

 

I wish my tax rate was that low. lol 8.25% FTL...


I think I am going to sell it private. The dealer isn't gonna give me anywhere near what it should bring in. Although if I traded in then I'd have to get the truck for below invoice which is near impossible...my name is Bond, James "impossible" Bond. As in there's no pussy too impossible for me. ;D So if they don't comply I can pull some ju-jitsu crap on them and see what they say then. hehehe

 

Was the extra $500 on their sticker for freight, or PDI, or some bullshit doc fee?

 

I highly recommend the Bottom Line Price from Consumer Reports. It will cost you $14.95 and save you hundreds!
When I picked up my truck, I used Costco as a starting point. Took the price from the "Costco" dealer to another dealer to see if they would beat it, they did.
Went back to the Costco dealer told them I could get it cheaper, so they beat the price again. Back to the non-Costco dealer, he beat it by $100.
I then showed him the pricing report, mentioned above, which showed exactly what the dealer paid for the truck.

In the end, I got my truck out the door, including TTL, for $2500 below sticker, and this was 2 1/2 years ago. Toyota is in a lot worse shape today, so they will deal, hence the reason you had 4 sales monkeys coming after you.

The key to any new car/truck purchase...P A T I E N C E! And do your homework.

Good luck..I'd love to have the new metallic grey, love that color.

 

Probably transport. I think it came from the Numi plant right here in Sunnyvale, CA. Hell I should just go there and order it to spec, watch it get built, and drive it home. lol

I can get the invoice price on edmunds.com but idk how good that one is. I'm hoping on Toyota's terrible income that they will wheel and deal to hell and back for me so I can get it for about 22-22.5K...21K-21.5 is what I want to spend but that's like out of the picture.