I have made up my mind to buy a new Element and I have decided to trade in my current vehicle to do so, which makes it diffcult for me to appraise what is fair. I can find a new 03 EX auto AWD for 18,000 with destination included so I will use thatas a reference point. The 18 K is a good price to me and one reason I liked the element.

the KBB trade in value of my car is exactly $8K. Is it reasonable to expect to pay $18 K for the element and get 8K for my trade in (since that was what it was valued at)? When I bought my last car, it was used and I had to give them KBB retail and they gave me KBB trade in value for my trade. Should I expect to have to pay full MSRP of around $21K in order to get the 8K for my trade in?

i was hoping to get get KBB trade in value of 8,000 and give around the discounted price of 18,000. If I have to give full retail, I think I'd be better off just buying an 04.

[quote:fb27e09585=" "]i was hoping to get get KBB trade in value of 8,000 and give around the discounted price of 18,000. If I have to give full retail, I think I'd be better off just buying an 04.[/quote:fb27e09585]

I don't think you should have to go to full retail to get the 8k, but everything is negotiable. You can go to Carmax and get them to make you an offer on your car and use that as your fallback position. I think their offer is good for three days.

Bill

I feel your angst.

When I (finally) decided to buy our E in October, I was gravely disappointed by the trade-in offers on the old vehicle. While KBB and the other guides said I should be getting 13 to 13.5K as a trade-in, the dealers were offering 10.5-11. What I later found out was that if you think your car is in "good" condition, they're taking it down a notch to "fair", thereby slashing 15% off its value.

(Mine was actually in "excellent" condition... so good that the trade-in estimators at a couple of places sincerely apologized for being unable to offer that, saying that their hands were tied. They strongly suggested that I sell it myself, which I did - for 14K, although it took a couple of months.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that you need to be prepared to be disappointed - or, rather, shocked - by really lousy offers for the trade, especially when they're giving so much away at 18K for the E.

Sell it yourself. I had good results from www.autotrader.com and www.cars.com , but also discovered that the local (major city) newspaper was a complete waste of money and time. Go figure!

KBB listed my trade at $500 in "fair" condition....

we had already set the price with our salesperson on our E.....we only took my husband's car to the dealership and had agreed on the final price of the E, warranty, destination, etc.

Then we bought our trade to the dealership.....I expected $500 for it, after all it was a 10 year old car in truly fair condition.....they gave me $300 and I was a bit pissed, but my salesman quickly said "We will take another $200 off of our agreed upon price, but we have to put it on paper that your trade in's value is only $300"

Belbo (didn't I see you in the Lord of the Rings?), you should expect and demand to pay invoice for a 2004 and $1000 under invoice for a 2003. You should expect to get between Fair and Good KBB value for your trade in.

AutoTrader if it's available in your area is the way to go if you want to sell your car yourself.

All of the above based on my experience in the last few months in going from a two car family to a one E family!

Of course, I paid a doc fee of $298 over invoice so who am I to give buying advice! :cry: :evil: :cry:

Bigfoot, thanks for the info. I have an offer on the table close to what you are suggesting. They want me to pay invoice for the element but are giving me "excellent" KBB value which is about $1K more than good to fair so it works out about the same as what you said.

Do you suggest using autotrader online or the hard copy magazine version?

I'm thinking about just buying the element outright which I can get for $18,550, 4wd, EX, roof rack, mudguards and some other option I dont care about, which includes doc and destination, just add tax and title. Then just putting my car for sale and waiting. But I dont know if my credit will allow for 2 open loans. The first payment won;t be until 45 days so that should give me some time to sell it. But it still makes me nervous being responsible for 2 car payments, no matter how short the time.

Does that price sound about right? It's the best I have found. My bet is most of the 03's will be gone when my car sells so I may just go ahead and buy it and wait on my current car to move. Hard decision to go the sure route and trade or take a chance and try to save some money.

Bush, am I reading correctly that the manual costs more on invoice than the auto? Or where you saying the auto costs an additional 430 on the invoice? Just being certain.

Thanks

Automatic costs more than manual.