Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see May lease deals!
Options
Popular New Cars
Popular Used Sedans
Popular Used SUVs
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
Extras:
Wheel Locks
Moonroof
Karr Security System
8-disk CD Changer
I bought this from Steven's Creek Honda in Santa Clara, California in March. Was this a good deal?
She had decided not to to go with a Toyota Prius. We had driven the Prius before and own 2 other Toyota's. She was unhappy with the quality of her 04. I was a Toyota service manager for 16 years and had to agree.
We paid $23000 after I emailed all the local dealers and made them compete. We didn't get as much for our 2000 Camry as we would of liked but we got it from the dealer we liked the best, also the closest.
We will be canceling the $1600 warranty. We just locked it in at their best price while I rechecked the price at Bernardiwarranty.com. We will save $600 at Bernardi Honda.
We got the car at Metro Honda in RI. The salesman was very low pressure, which we both liked. After a total of 30 years in the auto field, I stay away from high pressure sales people.
Good Luck and happy shopping!
PS: the extended warranty they sell called "The Mechanic" doesn't cover the hybrid battery. (was informed by a supervisor at the warranty company) You can buy the Honda Care warranty cheaper online that does cover the hybrid battery. www.myhondawarranty.com
PPS: It appears there was a few week period starting April 1st when you could NOT purchase a Honda Care warranty online. (Manufacturer's rule?) That appears to have changed and you can now purchase them online again.
Jeff
2008 Honda Civic Hybrid with Navigation
All Season Package
Door Guards
How does this price fair and how much room is there to go?
Thx
PS: have purchased two cars this year and found that calling the dealerships and asking for the Sales Manager, then offering them a specific price appears to work well. (only called Ed Napleton Honda about the Civic, called most if not all the St. Louis dealers about the Toyota Corolla bought in January.)
I look at Priuses and Civic Hybrids around north bay of California- Priuses w/option 2 sell for 23k without tax/charges and had no financing deals, even over memorial day weekend. My neighborhood Honda dealership offered the Civic Hybrid w/o navi had the car for 21k, 23.1k out the door. Also had 2-3% financing, and the 1k tax credit, so the choice was a no-brainer for me. I also bought HondaCare from the dealership for about 1.5k, and if I never use it I can get a full refund after the 7 years are up. I read that there are cheaper plans available online, but the refund was probably a special dealership-only thing. So the details-
2008 Honda Civic Hybrid w/o navi, alabaster silver metallic
Cost- 21,175 pre-tax, 23,145 out the door, 2.9% over 60 months
Salesman- Paul Ciardiello
Dealership- Manly Honda in Santa Rosa
Friendly atmosphere, didn't even have to haggle to get the low price.
Not much in my opinion, they expire in 2009. I don't know if that is on Jan 1 or Dec 31.
I was looking at a used 2005 Civic Hybrid that a dealer was selling for about $9000. I've already checked the VIN; everything came out clean. Pictures also look great. The only catch is that the vehicle has about 207K miles on it. Is it even worth going over there to test drive it? How much longer can I expect it to last?
Thanks
I own a 2007 Civic Hybrid, but there's no way I'd pay that much for a hybrid with that many miles. Honda's techonology is great, but everything dies eventually. A new battery pack is $3,000+.
One day... or two years.. or anywhere in between..
I certainly wouldn't bet $9K on it..
Edmunds Price Checker
Edmunds Lease Calculator
Did you get a good deal? Be sure to come back and share!
Edmunds Moderator
see: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/vr/decal.htm
I think bluebook did a survey and found that for SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, on the PRIUS, the sticker added approximately $5,000 to the value. This value of course is different in different areas and maybe with different cars.
FYI, I own a 2005 Civic Hybrid, w/ sticker, and am looking to get the 2008 version.
Very frustrating since almost every phone call or internet inquiry is on hybrids.
the inventories on non hybrid Civics isn't good either.
Scary since gas is 4.39 for regular here.
I got very frustrated and disappointed with the process so I put my plans to buy a HCH on hold. It is even worse with the Prius.
Please note that, from what I can tell, this demand has been relatively recent. A co-worker bought the same car (different color) for less than list 2 months ago - the same dealer now charges $1000 over list.
When gas was 3.50 a gallon, nobody seemed to care but once it went past the 4.00 mark, people went nuts.
Giving you next to nothing for your trade?
What is it? We can't get anybody to buy cars and SUV's that use a lot of gas to take them. They are already choked with them.
As an example, about six weeks ago (before things really went nuts) we had a customer leave because she didn't like what we offered her as a trade in on her Cadillac Escalade. We were going to give her what the local Cadillac dealer was going to give us...not a car we wanted to keep.
So, she returned last week wanting to do the same deal.
The Cadillac dealer lowered his buy bid by SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS, and he really didn't want it for that price!
She left again, shaking her head.
That just about says it all. When even the dealers are amazed, you know the market's going crazy. When the entire state of WA has one Civic Hybrid, and Escalades are losing $1,000 per week in value, you know the entire country is changing.
I bought a Civic Hybrid in early 2007, when gas dropped back below $3 per gallon. Couldn't find one in 2006 when it was over $3. But I got the car for slightly below MSRP -- $22,912 after TT&L or "out the door" as some people say.
After I joined the Edmund's forum, I read about people paying invoice prices for hybrids, and I remember regretting that I paid so much for mine. But not anymore.
I'm curious about current prices for trade-ins on hybrids. Maybe "isellhondas" could share some stories about what dealers are willing to pay for '06 and '07 HCHs and Priuses.
I'm sure that very few people are willing to trade them these days, but there must be some.
We just had a customer who was moving out of the country sell us his Insight.
We couldn't hardly give them away when we were selling them new but this one sold the next day after, literally dozens of calls from people all over the US.
It's nuts and I'm not enjoying this.
As a complete coincidence I ran into a guy that had the EXACT 2008 HCH I wanted. He was going to sell it to get a car with a little more oomph. I, obviously, offered to buy it from him. After a couple of weeks we spoke and he told me that Carmax was offering him $24,500, that is more than retail for a brand new one!!!
At that point I would just go to a dealer and put a deposit and comfortably wait for one at full retail. My reason to buy a HCH or Prius is more green than gas savings, in reality I could NEVER justify the expense from an economy point of view, even with gas at $5.
I own a trouble free 2004 HCH and have had several Hondas over the years. The new 2008 HCH drives exactly the way a Honda CIvic should ride - it handles and rides like a perfect car! It is great fun to drive.
Also, the dealer was actually pleasant to deal with.
Honda doesn't make green Hybrids.
Try reading it again..
Edmunds Price Checker
Edmunds Lease Calculator
Did you get a good deal? Be sure to come back and share!
Edmunds Moderator
My original post was a couple of years ago. (look at post #3).
We still have the Hybrid and are the absolute envy of our friends.
Especially the ones with NO kids/business or any real reason to have a huge $85+ per fill up monster car/SUV - except they want one (and G-d Bless them its a free country).
Back then I got a lot of comments online and in person over wasting money on a hybrid. Nothing ugly or mean. Just sage advice like a follow-up post:
"Congrats on your new ride. Fically, I don't think it is wise to trade in only to save on gas. Whatever you lose on trade and paying premium for the hybrid will most likely not be recovered from gas savings, unless you keep the car for 10 years, and gas prices go up to $3-4/gallon.
The main reason to buy a hybrid is to save the environment. I wonder what effect "day after tomorrow" had on SUV and Hybrid sales? "
Look. I personally think Global Warming..excuse me Climate Change is a scam (mind you I want clean water and think companies will pollute if we let them get away with it - I am a merciless enviro). And I am not here to flame or be flamed about it. Go with G-d however you feel - again, its a free country.
But I could see back then that the affects of the movement were very real. As a matter of fact I DO drive my cars for at least 10 years and the person that posted this was - intentionally or otherwise - prophetic. $3 a gallon? That's a dream in this county now. People would flock to your filling station if you had it so cheap. I don't see that changing in the forseeable future regardless of what we do (and yeah I say drill and explore nuclear, solar, hydrogen, coal, wind, water etc etc. just do it without killing the planet).
Just came from my local dealership where they are practically giving away gas-guzzlers. New 08' $34,0000 SUVs for $24,000-26,000. Big old Lincoln trade-ins are selling for a song. Meanwhile the local Honda place is sold out of all hybrid civics - including all the ones it had in transit. It is now selling civic hybrids that have not even been built yet. And have you seen the finance deals the big three are throwing out there trying to move huge chunks of Detroit steel. I almost feel sorry for them.
For the people that can afford to drive 12-18 mpg gas-hogs, more power to you. The gas you buy belongs to you in a free-market economy. But for me and mine, getting from point A to point B only has so much value. Our funny little Civic Hybrid does that. And I admit, it's been interesting watching our friends who thought I was crazy for "Wasting money on a Hybrid" begin asking us all sorts of questions about it - some in preparation of buying one....or at least trying to buy one.
Fellow hybrid owners take heart. Without really trying, we've become the cool trendsetters of the day. ; )
Went to a Cadillac/Hummer dealership and was not surprised at the HUGE inventory sitting there. My wife calls Hummers "Ugly on Wheels". There were millions of dollars worth of them lined up as far as the eye could see. The only other customer appeared to be a young man of about 20 buying a HUGE $70K Hummer. I assume daddy has some bucks or he plays for a local sports team and is beyond the reach of our current economic issues.
We even surprised ourselves by finding a deeply discounted used lux. car (2 years and 19K miles = $30K depr.) that we liked and negotiated for it. They jumped all over us to buy buy buy. We said we'd sleep on it, but would be back in the morning to discuss the final arrangements - we sleep on every big buy. We asked them to hold it till then and they sent us an email saying they would hold the car for us. Next morning I could NOT reach the salesman so I start to drive it anyway - checkbook in hand. Halfway to the dealership he finally returned my call to tell me he just sold the car. I was speechless. He even argued that I did not put a deposit down to hold it. I asked him if he had asked for one (he mumbled "no") and told him if I could write a check for the full amount, a refundable deposit would have not made me blink. For the next 5 minutes I listened to him make promise after promise to find me another car just like the one he'd just sold out from under me.
I didn't say it to him, but all I could think of was that my wife and I had partially decided to treat ourselves to a new lux car - something we never had - to help out a failing american giant - GM. We have friends that work for them. For our largess we we rewarded with shoddy tactics. By contrast our local Honda place actually told us to take our current CRV home with us overnight - admittedly I'd done business with them before - and think on it - holding nothing more than copies of our driver's licenses.
For the record, attempts to contact the sales management staff to complain have been ignored. All I can say is GM is on their own. Meanwhile our Prius and HCH friends are happy campers. :P
Think about it -- that luxury car sat in the dealership for days or weeks. Then, you and the wife show up out of the blue, express an interest in it ..... and suddenly, it sells? I don't think so.
It reminds me of the 'first-time home-buyer' shows on cable TV. The buyers look around at houses, all of which have been on the depressed real estate market for weeks or months. Curiously, whichever house the buyers want suddenly receives ANOTHER offer.
That offer didn't come the day before. It didn't come last week. It showed up the very day this couple made theirs. What a coincidence!
Inevitably, the buyers "adjust" their offer to full asking price ..... and just in time, their offer is accepted.
Whew! Weren't they lucky?
In the case of this luxury car, I suspect that the dealership just wanted to punish you for NOT buying it on impulse. Salesmen use whatever tricks they can to create a false sense of urgency. And even if they lose a sale over it, they know that every other salesman is doing the same thing, and eventually you'll buy a car from one of them.
I can't tell you how often I have had a customer look at a car we have had in inventory for three months. They leave to "sleep on it" only to have it sold out from under them an hour after they leave.
This is why we won't "hold" cars except under rare circumstances. A car is either sold or it isn't.
You mention Real Estate. When my wife was an agent in California, I can't begin to tell you how often a house would sit on the market for months only to get multiple offers the same day! Ask any R.E. agent and they will agree with me.
Sounds like a sloppy store to me!
This even happened to us when we lived in CA. Our house sat on the market for two months without an offer and we got two good offers the same day.
I can't tell you how often I have had people look at a great used car. They like the car, they like the price and they like me. Still, they have to go think about it or go look at others. I'll hear " This is the first car we've looked at" or " We never buy anything without sleeping on it"
Trouble is, two other people who looked at it the day before decide it's the car for them and it get's sold.
I'm like you. when I decide to make a purchase, I do it quickly.
The car you looked at today and want to think about until tomorrow, may be the same car someone looked at yesterday and is buying today.
I really dont know why a car can sit on the lot for 60+ days with very few looks, then in the span of two days there will be ten people wanting to buy it.
Just yesterday, I had a lady call me on a very nice 1999 CRV we had taken in as a trade in. This one was especially nice and with 80,000 miles it was priced to sell.
I tried to stress the fact it wouldn't last long and she said she would try to make it in that day.
So, her and her husband just decided to show up today instead of yesterday but, alas, it sold last night.
I could tell her husband was ticked at her for not insisting they come yesterday.
We love both our Hondas. They have been reliable tanks, but one of them (like me) is getting a older. This buy was meant to be a real slice of chocolate cake-like treat. Much as we like the Accord, it does not have the size and luxury combo of an STS or Jaguar.
For day to day our hybrid is our anchor for the forseeable future.
BTW. isellhondas. How are the 08' Pilots selling? We might just change our mind as they can be a pretty tricked cost-effective buy right now.