Unagi

Hey AudiHIVE, I am looking at a 21 Q5e. Never ordered a car before. Do you ust order what you want and when it comes in, you figure out how to pay for it and negotiate? Or does the negotiation happen on ordering?
Does anything change if the dealer modifies an existing order? Trying to get a q5e prestige. Not sure If I want to purchase or lease. Any advice would be great!

Sandroad

I have no idea if the scenario varies by dealer, but at the dealer we used, if we had wanted to special order, the dealer would have modified a Q5 already in their "pipeline" (but not built yet) to our specs and would have done so only with negotiations and deposit up front. And it would have been a 4 month wait. The dealer suggested ordering one completely off their current pipeline (i.e. not modifying one they had already requested from Audi) was not an option, but we didn't press the issue because it made no sense to wait even longer. We ended up having them go get an in-stock Q5e PP with most of what we wanted at another dealer for us.

SYMAWD

Negotiate first. A dealer doesn't want a car you may not take and if you negotiate once the car arrives, the dealer has no incentive to give you a discount since "where else are you going to get this special ordered car?"

KevinGary

I factory ordered my last two Audis. I negotiated the price at the time of ordering. Both times it took about 8 weeks for the car to arrive.

rdA4WtQ5

Ordering a car works best when you don’t need a car right away and you can’t find what you want a reasonable distance away for you.
If sh** happens it can take awhile sometimes. Ordered my 2020 SQ5 in March and received in September. My old one ran perfectly fine the whole time and sold it a week after my new one arrived.

Unagi

Doesn't it limit your ability to negotiate if they have to go to another dealer?

Unagi

I dont need the car right away, but worry about my trade which is a 13 q5 approaching 100k

superswiss

Just to expand a bit more on the above. To order a car, the dealer needs to first have an allocation. Dealers can only order so many cars per month. They are given a number of allocations from the factory to order cars. The factory gives out allocations based on past sales history. Dealerships who sell more cars, especially the expensive models will get more allocations. The allocations can be used to order cars for their inventory or custom orders for specific customers, so called sold orders. All orders come out of the same pool of allocations, and the dealership has incentive to order cars with all their allocations to sell as many as they can. So when you place a custom order it will either be done using an allocation that is still available or as mentioned above take an existing order that hasn't been locked yet and modify it.

You will negotiate the sale price upfront before placing the order. This could be in the form of a certain percentage of discount off of MSRP, or a percentage above invoice or a fixed dollar amount off of MSRP. Prices are generally subject to change, so you will rarely negotiate an actual dollar amount, especially since there are fees etc. that come on top once the car is here. You have the right to refuse delivery of the car when it gets here, so dealerships generally take your spec into consideration when negotiating, so if you order a spec that they think is hard to sell if you back out, they might be less willing to give you a large discount vs. a build that they think is easy to sell.

Don't talk about how you will pay for the car. First off, any financing can't be done upfront as rates etc. change from month to month, so the financing won't be negotiated until the car is here. Also leave it open as to how you gonna pay for it otherwise that will give the dealer an advantage in the upfront negotiation. Always keep the conversation limited the price of the car, not the monthly payment. At this time you can also negotiate other items such as fees, prepaid maintenance etc. and any potential incentives that are active in the given month.

I've only once bought a car directly from dealer inventory. It was a VW for my wife. VW doesn't really do custom orders. I've always custom ordered my cars. With my last two cars I actually did European Delivery. That's when you order a car and take delivery at the factory in Germany, before it gets shipped to the USA. Unfortunately, Audi has discontinued this program in 2018, BMW has discontinued it last year and so did Mercedes. I did European Delivery with Mercedes/AMG last time around in May 2019 for my current car and spent 2 months driving around Europe. The current gen Q5 was never eligible for this program, though, because it is made in Mexico, but it was an amazing experience to take delivery of a new car while it lasted.

ronsal

@Unagi
Go to the KBB site, and plug in the variables for your '13. It will give you an idea of the trade value.

rdA4WtQ5

Negotiate with multiple dealers before even talking about your trade. If you are patient you should get close to invoice unless something brand new on the market and none around. Honestly, you can sell your car yourself for about double what you would get trading in to an Audi dealer. Unless they can sell it themselves they have to wholesale it out. Leaving not much left to give to you for it.
During the worst of the Takata airbag debacle there were $4 incentives to trade in your old Takata equipped Audi for a new one. Then trading in starts to make more sense with an older car.
SUV’s and Q5’s in particular sell pretty quickly and for a good buck if clean and maintained to this day.