As Jalopnik’s resident car-buying expert and a professional car shopper, I get emails. Lots of emails. I’ve picked a few of your questions and will try to help out. This week we are discussing where you need to turn in your lease, and the challenges of using “supplier pricing” in this difficult market.
First up, do you have to give your leased car back to the same dealer?
“I am looking to lease a car but I might be relocating to the West Coast in a year or so. I don’t want to have to ship the car back to NYC when my lease is up. Are there national dealers, like part of a chain or something where I can turn in my lease anywhere?”
For some reason, this is a misconception about leasing that still persists. You do not have to turn your lease back into the same store you got it from. You can give it back to any dealer that sells that brand. In your example, if you lease a BMW from a dealer in NY, once the lease is up you can turn it in to any BMW dealer in the LA market. Your lease agreement is between you and the leasing company, in this case, it would be BMW financial service, not the dealership. Furthermore, you might not have to turn the car back in to BMW. Depending on the market conditions places like Carmax, Carvana, and Vroom, might “buy out” your lease if you have equity.
Next up, why is it so difficult to buy a new truck with “supplier pricing”?
I’m in the Houston area and I’ve been trying to buy or order a new GMC 2500HD Denali for I guess a month now. I get a GM Supplier discount from work and my understanding is that the dealer will get that discounted money from GM regardless. But almost every dealer around here has said they aren’t taking the discount now, and the few that are will only take it on a new order and want to add some of the Dealer add-on nonsense for $2k-$3k extra even though i just want it straight from the factory with nothing added. They are insistent that it can’t be avoided. SMH. I get that supply is tight and they are selling almost every truck they get in before it lands on the lot. But a few places had a 2021 with everything i wanted so since there aren’t really any changes from 2021 to 2022 I offered to buy it, and they still wouldn’t take a sale right now from me with the discount. They rather wait for someone else to come along and pay a premium or they don’t want the extra paperwork that comes with the supplier discount? IDK, it doesn’t seem like it should be such a hassle. I even tried some Dallas dealer and it was a no go. Maybe it’s just a Texas thing? I tried contacting GMC directly, but they are useless. They just say “dealers can decide themselves, blah blah.” no way to order directly through them i guess. Makes me appreciate the buying process I went through for my Tesla Model 3 much more. Any advice would be appreciated”
In a normal market, most dealers would be happy to take a “supplier price” deal. As you said trucks are selling so fast they have no motivation to sell anything with any sort of discount when they can get potentially get a premium over MSRP for the same unit. There are basically two choices here. You can wait out the market until the supply situation improves, but most analysts predict that isn’t likely to happen until well into 2022. Or you can expand your net further beyond your immediate area. Perhaps a dealer in an area where 2500 series trucks aren’t as popular will be more cooperative.
Got a car buying conundrum that you need some assistance with? Email me at tom.mcparland@jalopnik.com!