These Are The Most Outrageous Incentives Automakers And Dealerships Have Used To Sell Cars

There's seemingly nothing dealerships won't do to get potential customers onto lots — like those silly mailers that look like lottery scratch-offs. I hate those things, but some of the schemes actually do work out in favor of buyers, as long as they mind the fine print.

Other times, the "incentives" and the tricks are less consumer-friendly. I still have nightmares of the foursquare diagram, of watching a sales manager flick their pen on the page and shuffle it back and forth crossing numbers out, and adjusting monthly or down payments so fast it's hard to keep track of the money. All the while, the financing term keeps getting longer, or GAP insurance materializes out of nowhere.

The practice reminds me of movie scenes where an unsuspecting person is hustled by card tricksters and sleight of hand artists. Now, anytime I see an incentive from a dealer that looks too good to be true, I suspect shenanigans will ensue. We asked our readers about the wildest tactics carmakers and dealers have used to sell cars, and these were their answers:

The Buy an F150 vehicle and get a Kia Rio for $1

This was a few years back when the Rio's were still death traps. But I guess it worked if you had a kid that needed a vehicle.

I have seen other wordings with other manufactures, but thats the one I recall the most as Ricart is a big local dealer.

And, similarly:

Kia (in)famously offered a "Buy one, get one free" deal in the early 2000s. When you purchased a minivan (their most expensive model at the time), you received a Rio hatchback (their cheapest trim and model) for free. Sounded like a good deal, until you realized that you were required to forgo all incentives on the minivan, which were about equal in value to the new Rio's transaction price.

Submitted by: Shift24, caddyak

Free AR15 + Bible.

(Here is the source of the screenshot from a WLTX report titled, "God, guns, America.")

Submitted by: ItsYourBoyHobbes

They used to do this with Chevy vans and you could get a Geo metro for free.

I dated a girl that drove such a metro, sadly they did not let us take the van on dates.... didn't stop us from using the metro.... or my 280z either

Submitted by: FutureDoc

The worst I've seen sounded the same, but was a scam. It's done at a chain of St Louis Dealerships. They have a lifetime powertrain warranty on used cars they sell.

Their fine print though includes having to complete every piece of maintenance on their schedule at their dealers. This schedule is not the manufacturer maintenance schedule but one created by the dealer network which includes things like full synthetic oil changes every 3k miles, coolant and trans flushes every 20k miles and so on. It's insane. If you followed it you'd end up paying many times more the cost of a replacement in "required" maintenance alone.

Submitted by: jminer

I admire your honesty.

Hey, do you remember when dealerships were doing "buy one get one for a dollar" deals on PT Cruisers? Still a bad price, somehow.

Submitted by: Qaaaaa

Harley Davidson had a deal back in the 80's where if you bought an 883 Sportster (MSRP at the time was $3,995) and later decided to return and purchase a larger Big-Twin bike (then known as the Evolution engine) they would offer trade-in value for the Sportster of the original MSRP no matter condition or mileage.

Submitted by: OnTwoWheelsAllTheTime

72 and 84 month Financing

Submitted by: Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire

We bought my wife's old Town & Country during Cash for Clunkers. There were very few cars in inventory at that point. The dealer we went to had two minivans, the "loaded" one we bought, and another one that was more rental spec. With the powered sliding doors, tons of electronic gizmos to inevitably break, we opted for the Lifetime Bumper-to-Bumper warranty they were offering at the time – it was discounted down to $1800 and just felt like the thing to do. The van was totaled last year when someone made a left turn directly into the front left corner of the van, apparently forgetting about basic right-of-way rules.

We were planning to keep the thing forever because we never had to pay for anything other than basic maintenance. She had accumulated nearly 190k miles by the time of the accident and we netted slightly over $6,000 in warranty-covered repairs over the 11 years we had it.

10/10, would purchase again. I miss that stupid thing.

Submitted by: Brian, The Life of

I mean... I bought my GTI in 2018. It was listed at $19,999 with 0% interest for 5 years. It also came with a 6-year bumper to bumper warranty. I walked out for a little over $21k, and sold it earlier this year for $22k.

That was a pretty great incentive. And timing.

Submitted by: Segador

Tesla had a pretty sweet deal going for a while with the free supercharging for life. I think they also offered a pretty decent warranty on the battery when they were still fledgling in the market.

Submitted by: Bigburito

[...]

Ooh ooh ooh, I can answer that sir. Back in 1994 Brazil restarted Beetle production at the demand of the then president Itamar Franco (looking for nostalgia votes) for just one year, only to discover that nobody wanted them. So to dump the inventory VW came up with a "Buy a Santana", which at that time was the flagship luxury car, and GET A FREE BEETLE. The big joke at the time was "Can I pay extra for the Santana to NOT have to take the Beetle".

(The Beetle is locally known as the Fusca in Brazil, according to the Journal of Commerce.)

Submitted by: Mr Joshua

A price advertised online that's ridiculously low, only to get hit with the actual price in person, and that's before the 10-15% interest rate added as well.

Kiss my ass gulfgate dodge, there's a reason you never got my business

Submitted by: RedRaiderEducator