This past Saturday morning I was doing my near daily routine of checking Toyota.com inventory of inbound/build phase Meteor Shower LC Premium within 100mi of my area. FEs usually get lumped in the search results and the default sort pushes lowest price to the top.
It took a triple take but 2nd from the top was a Meteor FE on the lot posted for $4800 UNDER sticker. Of course I figured this couldn’t be accurate but hey I’ll call and shake this bush and get a laugh out of it if anything. 10mins and a call back later the salesman advises their third party website manager triggered a discount on error but they would honor the price today.
Ok, if this was a vanilla Rav4 I would have taken this as a sales tactic, no way a FE would be intentionally discounted this early, right? Today I hop back on the search and see a Trail Dust FE at $3k discount at a completely different dealer in town. This 2nd data point has me thinking the FEs arent moving fast and volume dealers want them gone.
We ended up dropping everything on Sat and bought the truck, the value prop for FE at discount vs LC was pretty much a no brainer, the amount of port/dealer fat on our LC premiums is easily pushing sticker to $72k+.
To sum- if you’re in the market for an FE, hawk the advertised prices and find motivated dealers (or those with incompetent web mgrs)!
It took a triple take but 2nd from the top was a Meteor FE on the lot posted for $4800 UNDER sticker. Of course I figured this couldn’t be accurate but hey I’ll call and shake this bush and get a laugh out of it if anything. 10mins and a call back later the salesman advises their third party website manager triggered a discount on error but they would honor the price today.
Ok, if this was a vanilla Rav4 I would have taken this as a sales tactic, no way a FE would be intentionally discounted this early, right? Today I hop back on the search and see a Trail Dust FE at $3k discount at a completely different dealer in town. This 2nd data point has me thinking the FEs arent moving fast and volume dealers want them gone.
We ended up dropping everything on Sat and bought the truck, the value prop for FE at discount vs LC was pretty much a no brainer, the amount of port/dealer fat on our LC premiums is easily pushing sticker to $72k+.
To sum- if you’re in the market for an FE, hawk the advertised prices and find motivated dealers (or those with incompetent web mgrs)!
