When I bought my 2001 Corvette and later my 2006 Corvette, I was disappointed with the local Dealers who didn't have the specific car and was determined to sell their Vettes at MSRP, sometimes higher or at best, just a bit lower.

So, with the help of CorvetteForum.com, I was able to locate a dealer in the midwest who I sold me the specific car I wanted at a great price. The key was what is called a Courtesy Delivery. The selling dealer never took delivery of the car, instead it was sent directly to a local dealer, who charged $300-500 to take delivery, besides that cost, there was no other costs associated with this type of purchase. The bottom line, is that this method allowed me to get the car I wanted at a price that was not inflated by the local market.

Anyways, does Lexus have something like this? Am I likely to get a better deal this way or will local dealers sell me a 400h at anything near invoice?

I'm not sure about the "courtesy delivery" thing, but here's my 2 cents.....

1. Don't pay MSRP, you can at least get 4000 off MSRP, probably more now.
2. My local dealers wouldn't do a whole hell of a lot, I think the best I could do with them was 48k on the 51.3k MSRP one
3. I ended up purchasing my out of state and having it shipped. Doing that I got a few more thousand less and shipping cost me 600 (which is pretty close to the delivery you mentioned above).

There were no other fees associated (ok other than $50 to overnight paperwork) except of course local TTL.

Chris,

I just make a decent deal on a Lexus ES350 in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can send the dealers an email inquiring about the model you want to buy. You should know not just the model but the options you want included. Several of them have "Internet Reps" which focus entirely on sales via the net. One dealership offered me an ES for $500 above their invoice. Of course with dealer incentives they make more than merely $500. I knew they would be making about 4.1% above their actual cost which is on the low side of what is a reasonable profit for a car. Unfortunately the dealer didn't have the car in the color I wanted but another dealer (whom I contacted via email) did and he was willing to match the price, so I drove from SF across the Golden Gate Bridge to the dealership and bought the car.

I can't say how close to dealer invoice you can get a 400h, but you should email the local dealers and provide specifics. You can go to the Lexus web site can 'custom build' your car. then email the specifics to the dealers and ask them how much they would be willing to sell the car. If you email them, these inquiries would be forwarded to their Internet sales rep if they have one. If you want, go to consumer reports web site and you can pay them to provide information on the model you are interested in. They will tell you the dealer's actual cost, not just dealer invoice (but including incentives that they get.) This will tell you how much above their actual cost they are asking. Consumer reports says 4% to 8% is a reasonable price which allows the dealer to make some profit.

Just to add, Archie is correct for the most part. Only I wouldn't bother with paying for the consumer reports report. (I did and there was nothing I didn't already find for free, and I actually found more info than they provided anyway).

I would hit the lexus forums (this one and carspace.com seem to be the better ones) to see what other people are getting them for.

Of course the forums are no substitute for actually having the real figures. There are a slew of free sites out there (google is your friend) that will tell you the real cost. edmunds.com and cars.com are good starts, but they pretty much only list the basic info. If you dig deeper, you'll find the holdback (edmunds mentions it actually), the wholesale holdback, the TDA, and of course the invoice price.

For a jump start (this is all from memory) for lexus, the holdback is 2% of base MSRP, the wholesale is another 1%, and I believe the TDA varies with models (this one is harder to dig up) but I think is around $400-$600.

Subtract all that from invoice and you'll have what the dealer really pays for the car.

This is helpful!