No incentives? You're just not looking hard enough. I took delivery of my new Ranger several weeks ago and got $1250 of incentives. I got $750 for ordering early (last Nov.) and got another $500 for I don't know what. It was included in the sale and I choose to not look the gift horse in the mouth.

 

Right now in may area Ford is offering 3.9% financing and $500 cash back. When I said no incentives, I meant not enough to get me to even make a call.

You did about as well as anyone that I know and yet I still wouldn't be enticed.

 

Agreed. Even $1250 on a potentially $40,000+ truck is chicken feed.

 

If you can get employee or "friends and family" pricing, discounts start looking a bit better (3-4 grand on employee pricing plus the $500 rebate). Costco's buying program gives "friends and family" prices to Costco members and I have used it to get newly-introduced vehicles at the best price possible.

Ford (and other mfrs) have dug themselves into a hole; they have gotten consumers used to rebates and discounts, so many people don't buy vehicles without them. But when they bring out a new vehicle, they set the price fairly high because they anticipate that rebates and discounts will be in their future. If you want to be the first person on your block to drive something new and in demand, you will pay more. (I remember when the PT Cruiser was introduced and people were paying *over* list price for them...)

You will probably get a Ranger cheaper when dealer inventory starts piling up but it depends on how soon you want or need one.

I have been seeing Rangers on the road and they look great. IMO, staging a Ranger next to an F150 may sell the Ranger to people who are thinking about parking it in their garage, parallel parking it in a city parking space, or parking in a downtown parking garage (which I did daily for years and still do at least once weekly).

George

 

The OEM's will tell you the reason for the rebates is because most people are upside down in their current vehicle. They need the rebate to pay off their old car loan. Of course, this does not explain why Honda, Toyota and others sell lots of cars with minimal rebates.

Also, many people use the rebate to pay off other loans. Yes, the borrow money to pay off other money. This is particularly true with 0% financing.

When buying a car in the past, the salesman asked me if I wanted to apply the rebate to the purchase price or take it out in cash. I looked at him incredulously and said to apply the rebate to the purchase price. When I asked him "who takes the rebate out in cash?'. He responded, "most people".

 

Holy cow...I did not even realize this was a thing, using rebates for anything but reducing the purchase price. So you get badly upside down in the new vehicle instantly. But the borrowing money to pay off other money makes sense, especially for people who shop only considering their monthly payment, not the real price.

Many foreign brands (including Subaru) never got into the rebate game, and even Lincoln (in contrast to Ford) does very minimal rebates. I looked at MKX's compared to Edges last year and there were huge rebates on the Edges and very little on the MKX. (I think most Lincoln buyers do leases as a result.) I remember one reason for Saturn's success is that they had a "one price" policy for all dealers and customers and it made people secure that they were not getting fleeced on their deal.

 

At least, they are not getting screwed worse than anyone else.

 

I've noticed now that the Ranger is out, GM is starting to give better incentives to buyers of the Colorado/Canyon. As much as $2500 from factory, possibly more at dealer level. Last year and the year before if you wanted a Colorado/Canyon you were paying full sticker, or close to it. Ford is now offering $500 off on Ranger from factory, possibly more at dealer. I've seen some dealers here in my area offering as much as $2000+ off sticker for the Ranger.
This has me thinking though. (Scary, I know ) If the manufacturers are all offering on average, say $3k (for example) in rebates on most new vehicles; why don't they just announce that they're cutting sticker price across the entire line-up by $3000? If Ford made that announcement, they'd probably have to double production on every vehicle in their product line just to keep pace with demand!

 

Rebates can be adjusted on a daily basis. "Hurry in. Rebates end Monday!". Heard that one before?

Monkeying around with MSRP is not so simple.

"Hurry in before we raise the price!", will just make people mad.

"SALE, SALE SALE!". Has better impact.

 

I was recently kicking tires at a Toyota dealer (looking at a RAV4 for my bride). Once the salesperson realized that the F-150 was mine and figured out that I'm pretty much a Ford guy he offered up some future info on the RAV4 rebates, He simply said to come back in Sept and the RAV4 will offer a $3000 rebate as opposed to the $1250 at the time that I was looking.

 

I'm surprised he knows that so far in advance. When my dad was selling Fords, they didn't know until Ford announced it. No advance warning. The best they could do ahead of any announcement was to speculate about truck month offers based on previous years.

 

I agree on the Toyota advance rebate thing....dealers usually don't know that far beforehand so they can't play games with customer timing. The RAV4 is new for 2019 as I recall, so I'm surprised that the rebate will be that high (although they have hung a big fat price tag on the loaded RAV4's, especially the hybrid versions). I did see a $3k rebate on their Sienna minivan and Avalon, so Toyota has gotten into the big rebate game with the domestic companies and Nissan.

I'm surprised the dealer told you to take a walk till September, because there may be some killer deals on competitive vehicles before then. They usually want to make the sale *today*.

 

I made it pretty clear that today wasn't the day so he seemed to habla.

 

Once that is established they do leave you alone pretty quick