What really drives them crazy is if you just write a check for the full amount.
The last time I bought a car I went into the dealer planning to tap my home equity line for about half the price. It was fun watching the loan guy's grind knowing what my interest rate I already had available. He started off around 9% and kept dropping when I told him "No, that's way too high". He finally got to around 4.5% which was just a hair below what the home equity line was after the tax deduction.
Never accept a car dealers first offer on either the price or the interest rate.
Even better, walk in with an attache case full of hundreds.
That’s exactly what I have done for every new car I owned: Pay with a check! No financing at all. Of course, it limited my choices to vehicles under $35,000 (including title and tax) but there are a lot of nice cars for that amount or less. Some great used cars can be acquired for less than $20,000.
A good friend bought his 2002 BMW 740Li with 48,000 miles for $24,000; the previous owner always used Zymol so the finish was impeccable. The guy also threw 4 Blizzak snow tires into the deal. After my friend sold his ‘93 Lexus LS300 for $5,000, he basically got a like-new car for $19,000. Not bad.
As a Finance Director at a large Ford dealership I say you are 100% correct...I’d say 25% of our customers are check writers.
In 2001 I went to by a conversion van at a local dealer. It had the TV and VCR all the wood trim goodies. The package was stickered at 30k. The dealer had it listed at 26k. I got him down to 22k. Then when I went to pay for it with a check... he asked what about financing. I told him I finance my own loans. I loan myself the money and I was paying by check. He REFUSED to sell me the van for the agreed upon price unless I financed it with him. It took me two hours and a threat to call the Ford’s corporate office before he finally sold me the stupid thing for cash.
That’s exactly what I did. LS 400, check. Highlander, check. House, check. No interest, but because of that, my credit rating is not particularly good.
Ohh, does it ever!!! They kept trying to get us to take a loan, but we insisted on paying in full for our last car.