from bartering rocks and whale fat for soap, to selling 100K cars, the evolution of business. The numbers dont lie....MB is doing a great job of selling cars. Im happy to be a consumer and able to get one.

T

I realize that having 2007 cars (note it is till 2006) on sale at a discount may cause some discontent. There are many of you out there who already have the car and may be unhappy because you were unable to receive a discount, or merely unhappy because if they are selling at discount your car has also lost value. There may even be some elitists out there who only want a MB to be sold at MSRP because that is how it should be, and seeing a car sold under MSRP might rub you the wrong way. No matter what your situation is, I think it benefits everyone to try and buy the car for the lowest price possible. We should be happy that we can get a car for 'big discounts'. It is just simple business, they need to move the cars because they have more coming in, for eveyday the car is on the lot the dealership needs to pay premiums to their lenders. This, along with the fact that the car has a significant markup, means that the dealer is willing to sell at lower prices to make room for the new inventory while lowering their overhead. To make this problem less apparent MB should have done a better job of judging the supply of their car, I don't think it is a good sign that a 2007 S600 can fetch 7500 USD in discounts (merchant side), but as a consumer I am stoked. I want to buy the car as cheap as possible. That being said I will go back to eating my ramen noodles because I am merely a pre-med student unable to afford uber saloons.

I think Mr. Weiler is right on the money. It's all about the arc in the supply/demand curve. If you jump in on the front end, you'll pay more. Once the early adopters are sated, then the market pricing corrects to a saner level. This operates at all levels of the marketplace; one can see the same effects with the Toyota Prius and the Ferrari F40. The former went over MSRP for a good length of time, and the latter changed hands for ridiculous prices for a time before demand cooled (that was mostly on the secondhand market, but the point still holds).

And Porsche DOES offer deals, such as special leasing offers and the like.

Greg, great response, and very informative.

I do think that the time that each model is "hot" and impossible to get seems to be decreasing. I remember going to Ray Catena in Edison, NJ back in the summer of 2003 when the SL had already been out for several months and all of them were still sold and it was still impossible to get. They had a designo Silver Launch Edition SL500 that had a couple thousand miles on it and had belong to Mr. Catena's wife. They wanted to sell it to my Dad for something like $20K over sticker and it was used!

Dealer discounts have nothing to do with the resale value of the car. In the 70's and 80's, there were much less affluent people than today, therefore, in those days not that many MB were sold. Thus the high resale value. With the advent of leasing and the huge influx of affluent people, the used car market is flooded with MB. That's the cause of the low resale value.
By the way, 7K off 140K car is a rather token discount. The 2006 W211 are selling at invoice or below invoice at many dealers!

911s are not discounted? who says:

http://www.6speedonline.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=63785

I've bought new MBZ's since my 1985 model. Every car has been discounted in their line if you are a sharp bargainer . Even then, only the uninformed paid MSRP and the BS $1000 " Poly -Gly-Coat " protectant, etc., etc.
The resale of cars across the board today is not as good because of the internet and better competition .Factory sweetheart leases drive down resale also, as you see so many cream puff cars coming off lease after 2-3 years , backed by factory extended pre-owned warranties. 20 years ago, you bought used from a newspaper want ad and only had a choice of what was in your town.

You can't have it both ways. I'm sure just by being on this board, we are the type of buyers who goes into a showroom with all the internet price comps new or preowned to drive a hard bargain. Well, that drives down what a dealer pays for a preowned car on the other side of the table, to be competitive with the " cheaper dealer " you comp against , right ?! " Transparency " works both ways.